Ñurba

Nyurba lies beside the Vilyuy in western Yakutia, where forest, lakes and meadows line the river valley. The Vilyuy flows east to the Lena and forms a long waterway through the northern interior. Local tradition remembers Nyurbakan as an ancestral figure associated with the lake from which the place takes its name. In the early 1820s inhabitants dug a channel to drain Lake Nyurba into the Vilyuy. The work, completed in 1824, opened land at the former lake site and became a notable episode in the history of the settlement. The river continued to connect the district with other communities along the Vilyuy, while the newly drained ground gave people room to make use of the valley.