Usolye

Novoye Usolye was founded in 1606 as a center of salt production on the Kama. Its name distinguished it from the older salt town of Solikamsk. A register of 1624 counted five households and eight salt-boiling works here; together with other Stroganov works on the right bank, these brought the family substantial income. By 1715 the settlement had 327 houses and 43 boiling works. Ships built on the Yayva carried salt from the region.

Novoye Usolye remained the Stroganovs' chief settlement on the Kama through much of the eighteenth century. Their stone residence and the Church of the Transfiguration formed part of an ambitious building ensemble begun in the 1720s. Fires in 1737 and 1749 destroyed the wooden settlement, prompting rebuilding with wider streets and stone buildings. In the later eighteenth century the Stroganovs sold portions of their salt works to other owners, including the Armenian merchant Lazar Nazaryevich.