Ledengskoye

Ledengskoye grew around salt springs in the forested northern country near Totma. Brine was raised from wells and boiled in iron pans, a demanding craft that made salt a valuable product of the district. An early eighteenth-century census of the Ledenga saltworks records the labourers employed in the industry. At that time the works were leased to the Vologda merchant Yakov Khlebnikov, his sons Denis and Ilya, and their associate Semyon Akishev. The settlement's history was bound to the saltworks and the people who worked them.