We first heard of this place and the native peoples Nenets and Khanty, living here from everlasting in the eleventh century. It was Novgorod merchants trading in furs who discovered this land for the Russians. The travelers told that that land was so rich that squirrels and deer there were falling from the sky like rain. The Novgorodians could not help but colonized the lands on the Lower Ob in 1187. After the fall of the Novgorod Republic the Moscow Grand Dukes added epithet "of Ob and Yugra" to their title.

In the 17th century the territory was being very rapidly settled by the Russians, trading with the native peoples, working towards the prosperity of the country. The Siberian treasury was giving one third of the whole state budget. The capital of this young region was the town of Obdorsk, founded by the Cossaks as a fortress in the late 16th century. Every winter the Obdorsk Fair took place there, when the Nenets and Mansi hunters and the Russian merchants were trading and bartering ware for ware. The white skins of the polar fox were being used like money. This city is actually Salekhard, renamed in 1933, contemporary capital of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous area.

The 20th century was marked with civilization. The railway to the town of Labytnangi (a city, appeared as a settlement in the 19th century, the name "Labytnangi" translated from the Khanty language means "seven larches") was constructed in 1949, the regular flights to Tyumen, Tazovskiy, Tarko-Sale were opened in 1964, and in 1968 to Moscow. Radio, telephone and television appeared in the region also in sixties only.

The traditional branches of economy were retooled.

Moreover, developing the hydrocarbon deposits the area is very rich in began in the 20th century and it is going on now, making Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area a prosperious region, where the traditional northern crafts and industry live together amicably.