Underground minings on the right bank of the Bulganak river near the village of Bondarenkovo in Crimea

Abstract

The article describes the quarries located in the western part of Bondarenkovo village (the Republic of Crimea, Leninsky District), within the Bulganak limestone deposit. Development of the stone here was first carried out by adits, and later by open-pit quarrying. Underground mining took place in three periods: from the late 19th century to the 1917 Revolution; from the 1930s to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941; and after the war until the mid 1950s. First the miners worked with hand tools but after the war they started using electric equipment. Five quarries of different lengths are known. Bulganakskaya-8 is a quarry dating
to the late 19th–early 20th centuries; two accessible sections, separated with a collapse, measure 50 and 38 meters in length. Bulganakskaya-9 and Bulganakskaya-10 are two small prerevolutionary adits on the slope of the Bulganak valley, measuring 10 and 24 meters. Bulganakskaya-11 is a quarry dating to the early 1950s, with a length of 960 meters. Bulganakskaya-12 is a fragment of a mid-20th-century mine working, being 150 meters long. The probability of discovering new, previously unknown workings is quite high.