Koper s topchakom. Dvurechno-Durovskai︠a︡ doroga.

The photograph presented here is from one of two albums preserved in the Novosibirsk State Museum of Regional History and Folklife containing photographs documenting various stages in the construction of dirt roads in the Tomsk region by workers and engineers of the road-building department of the Russian Resettlement Administration. The albums date from 1906-8 and 1909. The Russian state paid for the construction of roads such as those depicted in the albums in order to connect settlers with a railroad line, a navigable river, or commercial-industrial centers. The overall purpose of the road-building program was to promote the colonization of the taiga (moist coniferous forest regions) of Siberia. The albums show the construction of roads in the region between the main line of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Chetʼ and Kandat Rivers in Tomsk gubernia (governorate), a distance of 170 versts (about 182 kilometers). The albums were digitized for the Meeting of Frontiers digital library project in the early 2000s. World Digital Library.