Nel'kan

Nelkan lies where the Chuya joins the Maya, deep in the highlands inland from the Sea of Okhotsk. Its name has been explained in Evenki as a place at the meeting of two rivers. The Maya links the site downstream with the Aldan, while the mountains to the east separate the river valley from the coast.

In 1818 the Cossacks Prokopy Novgorodov and Grigory Tsipandin established a grain store at Nelkan to support the local Tungus population. The site also became a base for investigations of a route toward the coast. By 1831 a house, barracks, storehouses and other buildings had been erected there for road parties spending the winter in the valley, alongside a smithy, a bathhouse and a yard for livestock.