Okhannoye

Okhannoye grew beside a monastery on the Kama. The Stroganovs built the monastery in 1650 in honor of the Solovetsky saints Zosima and Savvatiy; a 1678 register recorded the monastery, its servants and seventeen peasant households nearby. The surrounding settlement belonged to the Stroganov estate, and its inhabitants farmed, kept livestock and fished with a net called an okhan.

The monastery was abolished during the secularization of church lands in the 1760s. A road from Kazan to Perm came through the settlement in 1775, making its crossing of the Kama important for travelers and trade. In 1781 Okhansk became the center of an uyezd in the newly established Perm Governorate. Its position where the road crossed the navigable river helped secure its new administrative role.