IGARKA

Igarka is a town in Turukhansky District of Krasnoyarsk Territory, located 163 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. The lightest and at times the darkest city on the Yenisei route: here a polar day lasts 2 months in the summer, and a polar night reigns 2 months in the winter.

Igarka was originally founded in 1929 as a sawmill and a timber-exporting port. Later, it was granted town status in 1931. From 1949 to 1953, the Salekhard–Igarka Railway project made an unsuccessful attempt to connect Igarka to the Russian railway network at Salekhard, claiming the lives of thousands of Gulag prisoners.
Nowadays, it is an amazing city built on permafrost grounds! A permafrost research station is located there. The city is also an important wood-export port both to other parts of Russia and abroad and serves as a sawmilling center.

You will see here the "Permafrost Museum" with exhibits over 50 thousand years old, the exhibition "Construction 503" dedicated to the construction of the northernmost railway.