Shakhty

Shakhty lies on the Grushevka, among the coal-bearing southeastern ridges of the Donets country. The growth of settlements here was tied to the Don Cossacks and to the discovery that the black stone beneath their land could be used as fuel. Several Cossack farmsteads were founded on the site in 1805, among them Popovka and Vlasovka, named after the Cossack officers who established them.

In 1809, Popov opened a shaft worked by his serfs; its coal helped heat buildings and Cossack barracks at Novocherkassk. Other small mines followed, including one opened by the Cossack Semyon Koshkin in 1817, where a horse-powered winch raised the coal. The Grushevsky mine, established in 1836, gave the district a further focus for the extraction that would later shape the town.