Description of the attraction
The symbol of the city of Engels is the bull-salt carrier. And although the monument was erected relatively recently (June 12, 2003), the history of the symbol goes back a long way.
Salt was once worth its weight in gold. It was usually mined from salt lakes. One of these lakes was Lake Elton, from where, during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, a road was laid to the Pokrovskaya Sloboda (now the city of Engels). The foundation stone of the settlement dates back to 1747 and is associated with the decree of Empress Catherine II on the beginning of salt mining on the lake.
The Sloboda functioned as an important staging post. For this, the government invited the Ukrainian Chumaks - salt carriers from the Poltava and Kharkov lands (the first inhabitants of the settlement). Convenient harbors on the left bank of the Volga opposite Saratov were chosen for the salt warehouse. Salt was delivered by oxen (the horses could not stand the hard work) along the famous Eltonsky tract (Eltonsky shlyakh). By 1758, the number of salt carters was 2073 and with them 3840 oxen.
The "Great Salt Route" along which three quarters of all Russian salt was delivered in the eighteenth century since 1828 was gradually extinguished. The formal closure of the salt era took place in 1850. In 1914, Pokrovskaya Sloboda received the status of a city - Pokrovsk, and in October 1931 it was renamed Engels.
Today's Pokrovskaya Sloboda is a diversified city with its own infrastructure and a population of many thousands, immortalizing the history of its land in the coat of arms and symbol of the city - a bull with a bowl of Elton salt on its back.
The sculpture is a bull with a salt shaker emerging from the city's coat of arms, made using the forged copper technique. The height of the monument is 2.9 m, length - 4.5 m. The sculptor is Alexander Sadovsky.
They say that if you touch the monument to the Salt Bull, your luck will not leave you.
