Oktyabr'skii

At the mouth of the Bolshaya, Kamchatka's western rivers reach the Sea of Okhotsk. Salmon enter the river from the sea, ascending its channels to spawn, while sandbars and shifting water make the entrance demanding for ships. Itelmen communities lived along the river before Russian expansion; in the eighteenth century the Bolshaya became part of the sea route linking Okhotsk with the Russian settlement of Bolsheretsk upstream.