(Source: http://pravdaurfo.ru/articles)

The town of Bakal located in the South Ural is from all sides surrounded by mountain ranges and iron ore quarries, the most part of which have already been drawn up, which is not surprising: Bakal mines (currently — “Bakal Mining Administration” LLC) is one of the oldest Urals companies engaged in iron ore mining.

The development of iron ore deposits of Bakal started in 50-s of XVIII century. The first mines were owned by merchants – Old Believers from Simbirsk - Tverdyshev and Myasnikov. A total of about 2 million tonnes of ore was produced from underground until 1900 - quite a bit, considering that the stocks of siderite ore of Bakal were estimated at nearly 1 billion tons. In connection with the industrialization of Russia, the following 2 million tons were mined by the year 1914.

At the beginning of 30-s annual ore extraction here reached about 600-700 thousand tons. In 1950-s the Village of Bakalsky Mine became the town of Bakal. Local residents say that the city boundaries were constantly shifted: the quarry devoured entire streets; blasting operations were often carried out directly within the city limits.

Bakal attracts tourists with the fact that is “Zyuratkul National Park” with the eponymous clean lake and a mountain ridge with an altitude over 1,000 m is situated not far from the town, over the Suka Ridge. “Zyuratkul National Park” has designed 13 tourist and excursion routes — both through the territory of the Park and the nearby mountain ridges.