About the tourist base

The tourist base "Chusovaya" is situated on the left bank of the river Chusovaya after the settlement Sloboda (until the 19th century it was called Kourovskaya after the name of the nearby railway station).The tourist base is situated on a high rock called "The Dog  Ribs". This was the first tourist base  in the Urals, and it was formed on the territory  of an old leather- producing  plant. The first tourists came here in October, 1934. In 1941-45 a hospital for the wounded in the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War was situated on the territory of the tourist base. In our days the tourist base Chusovaya  is one of the largest  in the Urals and  is open all year round.

The river Chusovaya, being the left tributary of the river Kama, is one of the largest and most beautiful rivers in Russia. The Chusovaya  runs through the territory of three oblasts - the Chelyabinsk oblast, the Sverdlovsk oblast, and the Perm oblast. It starts in the north of the Chelyabinsk oblast, in the middle flow it crosses twice the territory of the Sverdlovsk and the Perm, and ends its way near the city of Perm, in the Kama water reservoir.

The river is 777 km long, the territory of the river-basin is 42000 square kilometers. Within the limits of the Pervouralsk district its length is 10 km, and takes in many tributaries, the largest of them being the Talitsa, the Big and the Chetayevskaya Shaytankas, the Bilimbay, the Makarovka, the Bitimka, the Sibirka, the Cheremshanka, the Chornaya, the Shishim, the Utka, the Kamenka. The Chusovaya has unique peculiarities: this is the only river flowing through two parts of the world - in Europe it starts on the eastern slopes of the Ural mountains, crosses them and ends on the western slopes.

The river got its name most probably from wrong Komy - Perm language or from the Udmurtian language, where "chus" means vivacious, quick, and "va" in Komy - Perm means water.

Matveyev explains the origins of  the name of the river this way. Now it is pronounced as Chusovaya or Chusova,  but most probably it used to be pronounced Chusva. But what does it mean - Chusva? There is no such a word in modern Komy-Perm, though there are  still such names reserved  as the Northern Chus, and the Midday Chus in the Komy-Perm national region (okrug), but the Udmurtian "chus" means "vivacious", quick. One can hardly find a river more vivacious in the Middle Urals. Then the word "chus" with its meaning fits very well.

With time passing by the word was forgotten in the Komy-Perm language, but it was retained in the related Udmurtian language in hydronyms Chusova (Chusva) and Chus.

But in one word it is chus, and in another one chusva.

The hydronym was known to the Russian people since the 14-th century, and in the Russian word the geographical term "va" is retained, though an ending is added.

The river names Northern and Midday Chus continued to develop in the Komy-Perm, and the element "va" was lost. The unnecessary element was lost, for the adjective meaning of the word "chus" was lost, and the word "chus" became unclear, practically a noun, and a strange toponym.

There are quite many cases like that in toponymy.

The Chusovaya has been serving man since long ago, and the first notion of Chusva in ancient chronicles is dated back to 1396.The Russians began to go down the Chusva in the 14-th century. According to Ivan IV documents, the Stroganovs merchants got the vast territories along the upper and middle Kama  and its tributaries  to use forever, and in 1568 the land of Chusoviya from the source and for 20 versts ( a verst is 3500 feet ) around  the river banks was given to them to own.