Siberian Forests

Forested ridges and river valleys fill this part of the western Urals. In the eighteenth century the region's woodland and mineral deposits supported a growing network of ironworks. At Lysva, west of the mountains, a foundry begun in 1785 smelted its first iron in 1787. Farther north, iron ore discoveries along the Kizel led to mines and a works opened in 1789. Rivers and dams supplied the power on which these early plants depended.