Zolotari

The steppe around Zolotari lies east of the lower Volga, in the country of the great salt lake Elton. Before the settlement was founded, the lake had become a source of salt for the Russian state. From 1747 the treasury organized extraction there, and carters hauled the mineral across the open plain to the Volga and Akhtuba. The salt roads brought traffic through a landscape of dry grassland and shallow saline basins.