The Peremilov Mountains

Peremilovskiye Hills (in old books, Peremilovy Hills) are an upland on the right bank of the Oka in its lower course, within Nizhny Novgorod Region: the Oka-side part of the Starodubye upland at the northern tip of the Volga Upland ^[4]. The steep, wooded bank stretches downriver from the Murom border area to Pavlovo and Vorsma, rising more than a hundred meters above the water; the rocks that make up the hills contain gypsum, alabaster, and limestone, and the plateau itself is cut by ravines, caves, and karst sinkholes ^[1][3].

Where the Peremilovskiye Hills lie

The Peremilovskiye Hills have no single boundary, and different books outline them differently. The narrowest understanding is that of the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: there they are a stretch of high bank in Murom Uyezd of Vladimir Governorate, from the village of Pertovaya to the village of Sapuny ^[3]. The Murom historian N. G. Dobrynkin traced the "upland coastal ridge" from the village of Spas-Sedchino downstream to the border of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, and the name "Peremilovskiye Hills" itself, by his observation, was applied only to the segment near the Peremilovo hermitage: farther on, the slopes were named after the riverside settlements — the Bazarovskiye, Klinskiye, Zhayskiye, Sapunskiye, Vysokovskiye, and Chulkovskiye ^[1].

Local historians of the 20th century extend the hills along the right bank to Pavlovo ^[1], while in ecological and geographical literature the name Peremilovskiye Hills is applied to the entire northern tip of the Volga Upland, bounded on the north and northwest by the Oka and occupying land in Vachsky, Pavlovsky, part of Sosnovsky, and neighboring districts. The stretch from Pavlovo to Nizhny Novgorod is singled out under the name Berezopolye.

In the geomorphological description of the Region, the Peremilovskiye Hills are the Oka-side part of the Starodubye upland, one of the fragments of the Mstyora–Kozmodemyansk Ridge, which runs as a belt along the right banks of the Klyazma, the Oka, and the Volga across the entire Region and breaks up into separate "hills": Starodubye, Dyatlov Hills, the Fadeyevy, and the Khmelevskiye. Starodubye, whose old name is Berezopolye, extends from Gorbatov to Nizhny Novgorod and farther inland, to the upper reaches of the Kudma; absolute elevations of its Oka-side part reach 200 m ^[4].

On the topographic map of Nizhny Novgorod Region, the label "Peremilovskiye Hills" is placed across the territory of Sosnovsky and Pavlovsky Districts: it begins at the village of Leontyevo, where the surface rises above 200 m, passes the village of Laptevo (next to Pavlovo) at an elevation of 171 m, and ends on the left bank of the Kishma near Vorsma, where elevations are close to 150 m.

The Peremilovo Hills are in Vladimir Governorate, stretching along the right bank of the Oka River in Murom Uyezd, over 20 versts from the village of Pertovaya to the selo of Sapunov. These hills contain significant deposits of gypsum, which is quarried in many places. The gypsum is sold in Moscow and elsewhere.

Relief and geology

The Peremilovo Hills lie on the northern edge of the Volga Upland in the central part of the Russian Plain. This is a plateau-like erosional area with absolute surface elevations of 130–210 m; high chains of residual ridges along the river rise 100–150 m above the Oka, and geomorphological descriptions of the region put the maximum ridge heights in these places at 180–200 m ^[4].

The relative heights of the Peremilovo Hills are measured from the water level of the Oka: 71 m near the mouth of the Bolshaya Kutra and the landing of Aleksandrovo, and 68 m at Pavlovo. Thus the elevation of the bank above the river does not exceed 140–150 m.

The bedrock Permian formations — clays, sandstones, marls, limestones, and gypsum — are covered here by a thin mantle of loose loams and sands, in places by moraine and by Jurassic and Cretaceous clays. The plateau is dissected by ravines, gullies, and the broad valleys of small rivers, and karst landforms are well developed: caves, sinkholes, and collapses. The slopes are deeply cut by river valleys and branching ravines and are covered with forest — hence the picturesque appearance of the coastal heights.

The Starodubye Upland lies entirely on Permian deposits dominated by gypsum-bearing rocks and limestones. As a result, alongside ravines, gullies, and rolling, ridged terrain, karst is widespread here, and the density of the ravine-and-gully network is one of the greatest in Nizhny Novgorod Region ^[4].

Karst features are numerous across the Right Bank in general: the same mechanism gave the region the Bornukovo Cave, the Ichalkovsky Bor, and the karst of the Annenkovo quarry ^[4]. The northern boundary of the Volga Upland runs along the high, steep Oka-Volga escarpment, where landslides and rockfalls are active and steep-bottomed ravines continue to grow ^[4].

The largest rivers of the Peremilovo Hills themselves are the Muromka, Kutra, Kuzoma, and Reut ^[1].

Caves, sinkholes, and a vanished lake

Gypsum and dolomite lying beneath the Peremilovskiye Hills are dissolved by groundwater, and the hills respond with sinkholes and voids. In the area around the villages of Filinskoye and Bolotnikovo, which the Kutra washes, dolomite and alabaster are quarried; in the Bolotnikovo quarry two large caves were exposed — remnants of the channel of an ancient underground river that flowed toward the Kutra or the Oka ^[11].

The Great Bolotnikovo Cave was long considered the longest in Nizhny Novgorod Region: a large grotto about 80 meters long, 4–5 meters wide and high, with several ascents and descents leading to a dead end. By 2014 its entrance could no longer be found: according to a quarry worker, the caves have been filled in or quarried away, and on the site of the third, smallest one stands one of the quarry's buildings ^[11].

In May 2005, near Bolotnikovo, Beloye Lake (White Lake) disappeared in a short time: a karst sinkhole formed in its place. Estimates of how much water went underground differ. According to some accounts, it was a body of water of about a million cubic meters that drained into voids at a depth of around a hundred meters ^[11]. According to Konstantin Klimov, head of the environmental control department of the regional committee for nature protection, the lake was small, and the event itself was routine for the west and southwest of the Region, where carbonate rocks are eroded at depth ^[12].

Neighboring Filinskoye has a flooded alabaster quarry left behind — a lake that locals call Alabaster or Marble Lake: people step into the water straight from enormous slabs of pink alabaster. According to villagers, the quarry, together with an excavator standing on its floor, was flooded in a single night by an underground river that broke through ^[11].

There are five to six thousand cubic meters of water there; the lake's diameter is about 60 meters

Alabaster, lime, and gypsum

The economic fame of the Peremilovskiye Hills is stone. The Brockhaus and Efron dictionary knew them above all as a place with "considerable deposits of gypsum, quarries of which are worked in many places," with sales going to Moscow and other cities ^[3]. N. G. Dobrynkin described the riverbank slopes as a layered cake of alabaster, red brick clay, and dyeing sands, visible for many versts along the river ^[1].

Lime was also tried here, but it lost out to alabaster. In 1878 the Vladimir Gubernia Gazette told the short history of the Bolotnikovo lime quarries — begun in 1871 and fizzling out as soon as demand for alabaster grew.

Here lie rich beds of alabaster, in places interlayered with red brick clay, dyeing sand, and reddish and yellow earth; all these strata are clearly visible in the riverbank slopes, where they rest in horizontal bands, beginning from the village of Spas-Sedchino downstream to the border of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, over a distance of 600 versts

In the Peremilovskiye Hills, washed by the Kutra River, which flows into the Oka River, on the right side, near the small village of Bolotnikovo, 42 versts from the town of Murom, limestone was discovered. In 1871 local residents began to quarry it and burn it on the spot… For some time Bolotnikovo lime was put to use and found its buyers, but soon the strong demand for alabaster — whose extraction is considered the main business among the people of Bolotnikovo — put an end to the nascent working of the lime deposits, and the lime of the Bolotnikovo hills awaits more energetic entrepreneurs in the future

The name and the legends

Historical and local-lore texts give two variants of the name — Peremilovy and the Peremilov Hills ^[1]. The legend of the name's origin is told in two ways, and both were recorded by the Murom local historian E. Dobrynkina.

According to the first legend, a pagan temple of the god Peremil — patron of love, concord, and friendship, whom the records liken to the Slavic Lel — stood on these hills. There are no documentary traces of the temple: the god, as the record itself observes, lives only on the lips of the people ^[1].

The second legend links the name of the hills with the Murom saints Peter and Fevronia. According to this account, the couple, driven out of Murom, lived on the banks of the Oka, and on the way back the princess came to the foot of the hills and thanked them for giving her shelter. At the foot flows a small river to which, by the same legend, Fevronia herself gave the name Muromka. The local historian A. A. Epanchin gives a simpler version: while walking in the hills, Fevronia exclaimed, "What lovely hills!" (premilye gory) — and that is what they have been called ever since ^[1].

Individual crags and slopes have names of their own, and in Pavlovo they remain in use to this day: the Dalnyaya and Voskresenskaya crags, and the Semyonova and Spasskaya hills ^[1].

He lives only on the lips of the people. He was a god of love, concord, and friendship, and was probably identified with the Slavic god Lel

May you be, from now and forever, "lovely hills" for having given us shelter and refuge

on the high right bank of the Oka, deeply cut by ravines. In this part of the Region the riverside heights bear the common name of the Peremilov Hills, while within Pavlovo their separate hills have local names of their own: the Dalnyaya and Voskresenskaya crags, the Semyonova and Spasskaya hills, and others

Legendary places

Peremilova Hermitage. The place where, according to legend, Peter and Fevronia spent the night gave its name to a small monastery on the Muromka river, twenty versts from Murom. No description gives the date the church was built or the hermitage founded; legend attributes the stone church to Tsar Ivan the Terrible. In 1724 the hermitage was assigned to the Borisoglebsky Monastery, and in 1764 it was abolished and the church became a parish church ^[1].

All that remains of the hermitage is the name of the landing, "Monastyryok"; the churchyard settlement itself was renamed Sudostroy after the Revolution ^[1]. Tradition places the second stop of Peter and Fevronia near the selo of Zhayskoye — there, according to A. A. Yepanchin's record, the people of Murom caught up with them ^[1].

Gorodina Hill. It stands out among the ridge along the riverbank for its outline: from one side it looks like a truncated pyramid, from the other like a church cupola. Ivan Mikhailovich Landyshev, the deacon of the Lipovets churchyard settlement, who compiled a map of these places, wrote that Gorodina is not a single hill but a chain of hills stretching toward the village of Chulkovo for about two versts and reaching 60 sazhens above the level of the Oka there ^[1].

Legends of the Khlyst sect are connected with Gorodina: according to them, in 1645 God the Father descended onto the hill in a fiery chariot in human form, under the name of Danila Filippovich. According to the same accounts, there are caves in the hill that sectarians guard, and by a well on the hill, revered by them, Ivan Timofeyevich Suslov from neighboring Mikhalitsy held conversations; those who came to him threw silver and gold into the well ^[1].

Farther upstream on the Oka, an elevation called "Malaya Gorodina" (Little Gorodina) rises from the crest of the riverbank. According to tradition, the robber Semyon lived here, and many treasures are hidden around the hill ^[1].

Starodubye. This is the name given to a mysterious area in the vicinity of the Peremilov Hills. Tradition outlines it from the riverside selo of Klin downstream along the Oka to the riverside selo of Varezh, and in width from the crest of the riverbank to the Nizhny Novgorod postal highway ^[1]. Nineteenth-century records noted the distinctive dialect and prosperity of the Starodubs.

Behind the name stands the chronicle town of Starodub Votsky, named in the "Lists of Russian Towns, Distant and Near" between Murom on the Oka and Starodub on the Klyazma. Excavations by I. A. Ocheretin in the Vachsky District in 1990 did not find the town. The historian N. N. Gribov concluded from archival documents that in the 17th century the area of Starodub Votsky occupied the land between the Oka, the Bolshaya Kutra, and the Kishma; the archaeologist V. F. Chernikov placed the town itself at the mouth of the Vachka River, on the site of the village of Gorodishchi, now incorporated into the western outskirts of Vacha. He did not manage to complete his fieldwork, and the town's location remains an open question ^[1].

This hill is a narrow mountain ridge, separated from the general mountain range running along the right side of the Oka

The people live without want, do not go begging, and dress neatly

Selos Above the River

The Peremilovo Upland is densely settled, and many of its villages have stood there since the 18th century: some names have come down unchanged, while others have been altered or have split in two ^[1].

Protected areas

The wooded slopes of the Peremilovskiye Hills and the old parks at their foot are under protection: in Vachsky District there are three natural monuments on the bank of the Oka and in the forests along the Oka, in Sosnovskiy District an estate park, and in Pavlovsky District a town park right on the steep bluff.

• The area between Sapun and Pozhoga occupies slopes with a gradient of 20–45 degrees and elevation differences of up to 100 m; the pine forests here are 60–100 years old and 20–23 m tall ^[5].
• The area near Korovayevo stretches along the bank for 4 km on a west-facing slope with a gradient mostly of 30–45 degrees, in places turning into sheer cliffs; individual trees over a hundred years old reach 25 m in height and half a meter in diameter ^[6].
• Near Zhekino, spruce forests and pine forests 90–100 years old and 25–27 m tall have survived, and in places bilberry covers up to half of the ground surface ^[7].
• Within the natural monuments, all types of logging, mining, plowing, livestock grazing, and off-road driving are prohibited; gathering mushrooms and berries for personal use and scientific research are permitted ^[6].

Plants

The flora of the Peremilovskie Hills is diverse: on the slopes, pine forests, spruce-bilberry forests, secondary birch and aspen stands (growing where broadleaf forests once stood) meet, and where groundwater emerges there is moist tall-herb vegetation ^[5][6][7]. Below are the plants of three protected forest areas of Vachsky Okrug.

Older descriptions considered the black poplar a particular rarity of the area, found in the foothills of the Peremilovskie Hills — it is still occasionally encountered in the lower part of the slope near Korovaevo, next to the black alder ^[1][6].

• Trees and shrubs: pine, spruce, maple, European white elm, European field elm, aspen, birch, oak, linden, black alder, black poplar, goat willow, guelder rose, alder buckthorn, common hazel, rowan, bird cherry, juniper, warty spindle, fly honeysuckle, common raspberry, cinnamon rose.
• Herbs and dwarf shrubs: moschatel, burnet saxifrage, lingonberry, ground ivy, wood small-reed, Calamagrostis epigeios, wood vetch, hedge vetch, round-leaved wintergreen, white sweet clover, lanceolate stitchwort, perforate St. John's wort, wild strawberry, umbellate wintergreen, common goldenrod, wood club-rush, wood sorrel, mountain clover, zigzag clover, stone bramble, peach-leaved bellflower, nettle-leaved bellflower, European wild ginger, mountain everlasting, stinging nettle, common haircap moss, common Solomon's seal, lily of the valley, sickle medick, May lily (false lily of the valley), meadow cow-wheat, soft lungwort, ox-eye daisy, hairy wood-rush, one-sided wintergreen, creeping sedge, upright sedge, hairy sedge, heath sedge, nodding melic, stag's-horn clubmoss, pinesap, Syreishchikov's bentgrass, hemp agrimony, perennial dog's mercury, brittle bladder fern, common agrimony, Regneria canina (dog's wheatgrass), Siberian hawk's-beard, ground elder, spring pea, elm-leaved meadowsweet, bluish fescue (blue meadow grass), sand violet, wonderful violet, wood horsetail, common thyme, bilberry, common self-heal, mouse-ear hawkweed.
• Ferns: male fern, lanceolate-crested buckler fern, spreading wood fern, beech fern, lady fern, ostrich fern, oak fern.
• Orchids: broad-leaved helleborine, Fuchs's spotted orchid, common twayblade.
• Species listed in the Red Book of Russia: lady's slipper orchid (Venus's slipper) — it grows both near Sapun and near Korovaevo ^[5][6].

Oskor (black poplar) grows only in the foothills of the Peremilovskie Hills, mainly near the village of Spas-Sedchino, where many have been planted even in gardens

Animals

Among rare animals, the Eurasian scops owl is officially protected beyond the Peremilovskie Hills: it is named among the main objects of protection of the natural monument between Sapun and the Pozhoga landing stage ^[5]. The scops owl is listed in the Red Book of Nizhny Novgorod Region.

Local-lore accounts also assign to the Peremilov Hills the Russian desman and the little tern — species listed in the Red Book of Russia that are associated with the Oka floodplain at the foot of the hills. These species do not appear in the passports of the local natural monuments ^[5][6][7], and the information about them rests on local-lore tradition.

What is there now

Dalnyaya Kruchya Park in Pavlovo is the most settled spot in the Peremilov Hills. It was declared a regional-level Natural Monument of botanical profile on April 18, 1986; its area is 5.1 hectares, and the site lies on the right bank of the Oka within the city limits. The regime explicitly prohibits disrupting the park's historical layout, but permits landscaping and recreational infrastructure ^[9]. Today it has children's and sports playgrounds, a rope park, green art objects, and an observation deck over the bend of the Oka; admission is free ^[15].

The Zhaysk escarpment above the Oka near the selo of Zhaysk is the place that people in Vachsky Okrug advise visiting first of all. Zhaysk is linked with the life story of Peter and Fevronia: according to tradition, it was here that the spouses forgave their offenders, and the area is called the place of "Princely Forgiveness." For the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, a tent camp for the annual family festival "Knyazhy Bereg" springs up on the riverbank — in 2026 it was held for the tenth time, on July 10–12 ^[13].

Vachsky Okrug in general offers the Peremilov Hills as a region for walking: an eco-trail with seven springs, hills and Mount Dina, the log-tower houses in Chulkovo, the museum of Kazakovo filigree in Kazakovo, and the "Vachsky Azimut" orienteering festival, which has drawn about 1,200 participants since 2001 ^[13].

In the settlement of Sudostroy in Navashinsky Okrug — on the site of the former churchyard of Peremilova Hermitage — operates the "Peremilovy Gory" country complex with a science town. Its main marvel is a copy of the Pyramid of Cheops at a scale of 1 to 28, built, like the original, of limestone and having an inner underground chamber with a labyrinth at the entrance. The pyramid was named in honor of the researcher A. Yu. Sklyarov and was built by volunteers at the annual "Pyramids and Time" seminars. Nearby, visitors are shown a forest lake with the spring of Peter and Fevronia, a monastery well, the ruins of a stone church, karst sinkholes, and intergrown trees that tradition associates with the princess ^[14].

The same Sudostroy, "in the area of the famous Peremilov Hills," is named among the best places in the Region for amateur astronomy and aurora hunting: light pollution here is moderate ^[2].

At the other end of the ridge, in Sosnovsky Okrug, a quiet natural monument remains: the park of the selo of Elizarovo, with a pond, linden alleys more than a hundred years old, and an obelisk to those killed in the war; it serves as a recreation spot for the villagers ^[8].

Sources

1. museum-murom.ru — Murom Museum of History and Art — proceedings of the 2010 reporting conference — Sazonova E. I. Peremilovy Hills (archive)
2. V gorode N — Nizhny Novgorod publication — Hunting for the Northern Lights: The Best Viewing Spots in Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
3. ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — text of the "Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary," vol. XXIII, 1898 — ESBE. Peremilovskiye Hills (archive)
4. arz.unn.ru — Arzamas Branch of Lobachevsky University — course "Nizhny Novgorod Local Studies" — Nizhny Novgorod Local Studies. Relief (archive)
5. web.archive.org — Protected Areas of Russia — state register of specially protected natural areas (web archive) — Forest tract on the slope of the Oka River's high bank between the village of Sapun and the Pozhoga landing (archive)
6. web.archive.org — Protected Areas of Russia — state register of specially protected natural areas (web archive) — Forest tract on the slope of the Oka River's high bank near the village of Korovayevo (archive)
7. web.archive.org — Protected Areas of Russia — state register of specially protected natural areas (web archive) — Coniferous forest tract near the village of Zhekino (archive)
8. web.archive.org — Protected Areas of Russia — state register of specially protected natural areas (web archive) — Park of the selo of Yelizarovo (archive)
9. web.archive.org — Protected Areas of Russia — state register of specially protected natural areas (web archive) — Dalnyaya Kruchа Park (archive)
10. web.archive.org — Protected Areas of Russia — state register of specially protected natural areas (web archive) — Ilimdig (archive)
11. turizmvnn.ru — Tourism in Nizhny Novgorod — local studies overview — Caves of Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
12. web.archive.org — Travel.ru, citing RIA Novosti, May 20, 2005 (web archive) — A Lake in Nizhny Novgorod Region Has Disappeared Underground (archive)
13. vacha-tourism.ru — Tourist portal of Vachsky Municipal Okrug — Welcome to Vachsky Okrug (archive)
14. peremilhills.com — Peremilovy Hills country resort, Sudostroy settlement — official website — Attractions of the Peremilovy Hills (archive)
15. nn-tourist.ru — Tourist portal of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Dalnyaya Krucha Park (archive)