Abandoned dungeons: what can be seen in underground tunnels

"Soksky galleries" - one of the most interesting man-made underground objects in the Samara region. But at the same time - one of the most dangerous. Collapses, fires, the danger of getting lost - the list can be quite long. There were several tragedies, the most famous of which happened in 1999 - in the galleries killed seven people, four tourists and three rescuers. But despite everything, many kilometers of gloomy corridors constantly attract tourists.

Its name, "Soksky", is due to Mount Sokol, which is located, although the mountain is more known as Mount Tip-Tyva. According to the second version - they received their name from behind the river Sok, which flows side by side. Caves are mutually perpendicular corridors, with an average size of 5 by 5 meters. There are smaller corridors, 2х2 meters in size.

One of the main man-made attractions - a suspension bridge. The bridge was built in 2011 by Moscow diggers

History.
The first careers in those places appeared at the end of the 19th century. We needed a stone for construction, since Samara was mostly wooden, and there were often large fires. After one of these fires, a decree was issued - to build only stone houses. For these purposes, and began to actively develop.

In the 30-ies of the last century, prisoners began to be involved in the work. The country was being built, the stone needed more and more. The stone was extracted in this way. Specialists worked at night, - the rock exploded, and in the afternoon prisoners broke large stones into smaller ones and took them outside on trolleys.

Since the early 1960s, mining began to be conducted in an open way. Part of the galleries collapsed, the rest were divided into several systems. The total length of tunnels in some sources is indicated at 40 km, in others about 25 km.

In the early 90's the quarry was fully developed. The main extraction of the stone was moved to another place, not far from the old one. In 1993, the quarry and the tunnel were transferred to the city authorities. At about this time, the first tourists began to penetrate the caves, despite the prohibitions. There were attempts to restrict access - near the entrances the police were on duty, part of the entrances were closed with bars, and some were poured with concrete. But there was not much use.

The easiest way to block access is to fill up all the entrances to the dungeons with stones. But then environmentalists protest - half a century in the caves formed a unique ecosystem, and lives some sort of unique colony for the colony of bats. By the way, inside keeps a constant temperature - about eight degrees of heat.

There were also tragedies in these dungeons. The largest occurred in May 1999. Seven people died. Four students, went under the ground to celebrate the holiday, lit a fire and poisoned with carbon monoxide. And three employees of the Samara Rescue Service, who went to their search.

There is a story about lost people. Some are like the truth, some are too exaggerated. For example - about a man who spent two weeks in the back of the caves after his lantern crashed. What he ate is unknown. There were also cases of real rescue of people, for example - during an attempt to hold an unofficial music festival "underground". The participants pitched a large camp underground, about 1.5km from the entrance. After visiting the galleries for a day, some people left, and about 40 people decided to stay one more night. Most likely, they built a fire. As they write in the media - the smell of burning was not felt right away and a couple of people climbed to the surface and reported an emergency. The rescuers arrived and took the rest.

53.414739, 50.149321