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Tourist Hike to Crimean Wonders (1976)

An album of the Kherson Oblast Station of Young Tourists documenting a week-long hike by students of School No. 51 in Kherson across Crimea from 1 to 9 November 1976 — a valuable historical record of Soviet school local lore studies and the ties between the Kherson region and Crimea.

Overview

The document from the holdings of the Kherson Oblast Station of Young Tourists (State Archive of the Kherson Oblast, coll. R-3952, inv. 1, file 296) preserves a page-by-page account of a tourist hike by students of Secondary School No. 51 in Kherson across Crimea that lasted from 1 to 9 November 1976. The album is illustrated with a hundred photographs of archival pages, each with a description of a day of the journey. Over the course of the week the young tourists visited Bakhchysarai, the cave city of Chufut-Kale, the Assumption Monastery, and the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, climbed the Syuyuryu-Kaya rock, and spent several days in the Grand Canyon. The source is an important testimony to the development of children's tourism and local lore studies in the Ukrainian SSR and to the tourist and cultural ties between the Kherson region and Crimea.

Key Details / Subtopics

  • Route of the hike: Bakhchysarai, the cave city of Chufut-Kale, the Assumption Monastery, the Nikitsky Botanical Garden (Yalta), the Syuyuryu-Kaya rock, and the Grand Canyon of Crimea — the main points of the week-long journey.
  • Participants and timing: students of Secondary School No. 51 in Kherson; the hike lasted from 1 to 9 November 1976 (nine days).
  • Organizer: the Kherson Oblast Station of Young Tourists; materials are preserved at the State Archive of the Kherson Oblast (coll. R-3952, inv. 1, file 296).
  • The album as a historical record: a hundred photographs with descriptions of each page capture the practice of Soviet children's tourism and local lore studies, as well as the everyday life and educational itineraries of that time.
  • Ties between the Kherson region and Crimea: the hike underscores the tourist, educational, and cultural connections between the southern regions of Ukraine through shared travels in Crimea.