Chebarkul is a Russian town (from 1951), an administrative center of Chebarkul District of the Chelyabinsk Region. It is located 78 km to the west of Chelyabinsk.

The town’s population is 45.7 thousand people (as of 2005). It is situated in South Ural, on the eastern slope of Ilmensky Ridge, on the bank of Lake Chebarkul. The names of the city and the lake come from the Turkic language and mean “a beautiful, motley lake”.

History of Chebarkul

Chebarkul was founded in 1736 as a military settlement fortress on border of the Russian and Bashkir lands. Chebarkul Fortress protected southeast borders of Russia and was a transit point in food delivery to Cossack armies of the South Ural; later it became a large Cossack village.

The fortress was founded with consent of Bashkir khan Taymas Shaimov, the owner of the land on which construction was planned.

As a reward for that Shaimov received a saber, and Bashkirs were exempted from taxation.

During the Great Patriotic War a plant from the town of Electrostal was evacuated to Chebarkul. In the shortest terms, even in the course of construction works, the plant gave out the first production on the new place. Since 1993 the plant has been called JSC Uralskaya Kuznitsa (translated as Ural Smithy). One of the streets next to the plant was named after Electrostal.