Turinsk

Turinsk was founded as a stockade on the Tura in 1600, by order of Tsar Boris Godunov. It stood on the site of Yepanchin, a Tatar settlement destroyed by Yermak's forces in 1582. The new post guarded the water route between Verkhoturye and Tyumen after the opening of the Babinov road across the Urals. It became an uyezd center in 1603, and its wooden defenses were repeatedly rebuilt during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Fields around the town made Turinsk a substantial Siberian grain-trading center by the 1640s. It was also used as a place of exile from the early seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century a newer Siberian road through Tyumen and Yekaterinburg drew traffic away; the fortress burned in 1750 and was not rebuilt. Crafts nevertheless flourished, including woodcarving, gilding, icon painting, shoemaking and smithing. A yearly Saint Nicholas fair was established in 1789, and furs from Turinsk were taken to the Irbit fair.