Trip to Tupkaragan district.

“The main coal-bearing suite, consisting mainly of ash-gray clays and yellowish-gray sandstones, repeatedly alternating with each other. Clays are often carbonaceous and then get a dark, almost black color, often contain indistinct imprints of plants, and in the lower horizons concretions of clay iron ore. Sandstones often present wave-surface marks on planes and are prone to the formation of spherical intergrowths. The main brown coal seams of Mangyshlak are subordinated to this suite of layers. Their number and thickness vary greatly.”

Works of the Aral-Caspian expedition. “On geological research in the Transcaspian region, carried out in 1887.” N. I. Andrusov.

Sights of Tupkaragan district.

The development of coal deposits in Mangyshlak began in 1939. Soviet geologists determined the coal reserves in the vicinity of the village of Taushyk, there were not many of them, approximately 100,000,000 tons. The village of Taushyk is located in the Tupkaragan district of the Mangistau region in the northeast of the Mangyshlak Peninsula.
It is the administrative center and the only settlement of the Taushyk rural district, located approximately 88 kilometers southeast of the city of Fort Shevchenko and north of Aktau. The village of Taushyk is located at an altitude of 70 meters above sea level.
Coal mines were located 2 - 3 kilometers west of the village of Taushyk. In the spring of 1939, the construction of coal mines began. It was planned to build more than ten types of different mines and by 1943 to increase coal production to a million tons per year.
The main consumers of coal were the Caspian and Volga shipping companies. In the vicinity of the village of Taushyk, six mines were built for the extraction of brown coal. Skilled miners were needed for coal mining. The Soviet government evacuated about 900 workers related to coal mining from the western regions of the Soviet Union, in particular from the Donbass.
A small pier, Sarytash, was built, which was located on the southern coast of the bay of the same name. At present, an embankment of large stones has been laid to the pier, on both sides of the embankment, among the stones, a large number of goby catchers have chosen this place, this is a water snake (Natrix tessellata).
Currently, the pier is not working (2019). In the late 30s and early 40s of the last century, a narrow-gauge railway was laid to the pier, 26 kilometers long. The narrow-gauge railway was used to transport coal from the mines in the vicinity of the Taushyk settlement.
Only 11 kilometers of this road were laid along the plain and the shore of the southern part of the Sarytash Bay, the remaining 16 kilometers were laid along the bed of the Kumakapa River. Coal was transported from the coal mines to the Donspan structure by carts and trucks, the length of the road was about 5 kilometers.
It should be noted that the narrow-gauge railway was laid to the Donspan structure in the Taushyk tract, which is located 5 kilometers northwest of the Taushyk settlement. At the end of 1941, the construction of the coal mines was completed. The dynamics of coal production growth in subsequent years, which were announced in the report of the Tupkaragan District Party Committee at the first district party conference in April 1944. In 1941, the planned coal production figures were fulfilled by 19.2%, and in 1942 – by 28%, and in 1943 – by 40.9%.
There were many difficulties in coal mining in the Taushyk mines, for example, the spontaneous combustion of Taushyk coal was very high, and the untimely removal of coal to consumers also reduced the figures. In 1941, the coal mines were tasked with producing 125,000 tons of coal. Mining of Taushyk brown coal ceased after the war, the mines were mothballed.
Currently, there is "Mine No. 2" its mine tunnel goes underground, about 50 meters long.

Authority:
Alexander Petrov.

Photos by:
from Aktau City History Museum.