The Kuyalnik resort is one of the oldest mud resorts in our country, located 13 km from the center of Odessa at the foot of the Zhevakhovaya Mountain on the right bank of the Kuyalnik estuary.

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY…

According to opinion of some researchers, the name of the resort is associated with a high concentration of salt in the water of the estuary (from the Turkic “Kuyanlyk” – thick). It is no coincidence that in the literature of the Slavic peoples the present-day Odessa estuaries were called “Salt lakes”. Not only salt was mined in the estuary. In the book “Description of Ukraine” by Boplan, it is stated that the Kuyalnik Estuary (“JezeroKujalik”) abounded with fishes. Carps and pikes of “incredible size” were found here. «Whole caravans from places defended by 50 miles or more» came for this place to fishing them./strong>

The Russian linguist A.I. Sobolevsky in his work “Linguistic and archaeological research” believes that this is how the ancient Slavs called “boat mooring, dock”. In the past, the Kuyalnik estuary, like the Khadzhibey estuary, was a bay of the Black Sea. It is believed that there was an ancient settlement on the Zhevakhova Mountain adjacent to Kuyalnik, and on the estuary shore was one of the piers of the busy Kiev trade route along the Ros river – Southern Bug river – Kodyma rivers – Kuyalnik to the shores of Bulgaria and Greece. This path had the advantage that the loaded boats was going to the Black Sea, bypassing the Dnieper rapids. Even today, on the shores of the estuary, numerous fragments of various dishes from the period of the 6th-2nd centuries BC are found. These are traces of an ancient warehouse item. And in the village of Kuyalnik already in Soviet times, found the remains of the settlement, the foundation of which belongs to the beginning of first millennium before christ.

Once on the site of the Khadzhibey and Kuyalnitsky estuaries were the mouths of the rivers – Small and Big Kuyalnik. “Capturing” these mouths, the Black Sea has turned them into its bays. Then, sediments of river and sea sand formed the embankment (Peresip), and the bays became estuaries. By the way, the word “liman» (estuary) means in Greek “harbor”, “port”. Despite the abundance in Greek of the names that define the bay, anchorage, backwater, the ancient Greeks had a special word for the definition of stops at the mouth of the rivers – “liman”.

The salty waters of the estuary, “breaking away” from the sea, were condensed into brine – a saturated salt solution. The peculiarity of the Odessa group of estuaries is also in the fact that layers of silt mud are laid at the bottom. It contains many different mineral particles and organic matters. The complex chemical processes and the “work” of various bacteria gave silt mud priceless healing properties. As if in a giant laboratory, or rather, an underwater chemical-pharmaceutical factory, this dirt is continuously produced at the bottom of the estuaries. Especially large reserves of mud are in Kuyalnik. And in terms of quality, healing properties, it has become a kind of world standard. Kuyalnik is one of the oldest mud resorts in Ukraine. Sulphide-silt Kuyalnik mud according to its therapeutic properties recognized as reference. They help to reduce inflammation, strengthen the immune system and restore the function of damaged organs and body systems. The estuary brine also has healing properties, and the mineral water “Kuyalnik” helps with diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.

The first miners of salt and chumaks, who transported the extracted salt of the Kuyalnik Liman across Russia in the past centuries, unwittingly experienced the healing effects of brine and mud, and rumors and legends about miraculous healings spread around the world It began to attract sick people to the shores of the Kuyalnik estuary, hoping to alleviate their suffering. Following the suffering ones, inquisitive doctors stretched here; the most decisive of them, as it was more than once among Russian medicine, checked the effects of brine and mud on themselves, and then tried to treat their patients.

In 1833, a young, erudite, energetic doctor of medicine Erast Stepanovich Andreevsky arrived in Odessa. After learning about the healing power of silt and the waters of the Kuyalnik estuary, he managed to convince the city government of the need to create a medical institution here. The retired Major General Prince I. Zhevakhov, the owner of the land between the two estuaries, Khadzhibeysky and Kuyalnitsky, later called Zhevakhovaya Mountain, the city bought the land for the hospital construction, where architect Koshelev began to work in June 1833. Two months later, a “greenhouse” was built – for taking mud procedures and a “cold bath”, where it was convenient to be exposed to brine. So, thanks to the initiative of E. S. Andreevsky, the first page of the famous resort was opened. Gradually, the resort was rebuilt. Since 1841, on the slopes of the Zhevakhovaya Mountain along the shore of the estuary, by order of M. S. Vorontsov, land plots for the construction of country houses are donated. In the short term, a village grows up, in which a thousand visiting patients could stay in the summertime.

In 1851, Andreevsky moved to the Caucasus. Odessa highly appreciated the services of the Russian progressive doctor and erected a monument to him at the resort (the authors are architect I.Tolvinsky, sculptor B.Eduards). One of the Peresyp streets is named after Andreevsky.

For many years Kuyalnik resort dragged a miserable existence. How the city authorities were interested in them can be judged by the following fact. The well-known Odessa businessman N. A. Novoselsky rented Kuyalnik for 25 years “with various privileges” and turned the estuary into salt-fishing, extracting 3-4 million poods of salt annually. The Duma, which approved Novoselsky’s rights to the estuary, also transferred to him some of the resort buildings for storing products. In 1866, Novoselsky sold the salt-mine not belonging to him to the Ministry of Finance, and it broke Kuyalnik into seven plots and leased them to different persons. Then salt extraction here was organized by a special joint-stock company. Only at the end of the 19th century, the cheaper Crimean lake and Donetsk rock salt began to oust Odessa from the market, and this saved the resort. The memory of the “salt epic” is still preserved in the name of seven lanes, which are called “Salt”.

A new page in the history of the resort “Kuyalnik” entered the appointed head of the hospital in 1868, Dr. A. Bertenson. Then a new clinic for 15 cabins, seven houses with 80 furnished rooms, a restaurant was built, a park was planted and, thanks to his urgent requests, in 1873 the estuary was connected with a seaport and railway station by
hospital was connected by the hospital connecting the estuary to the seaport and railway station by railways.

In 1890, in connection with the increased popularity and attendance of the resort, construction of a new water and mud baths was started according to the project of academician of architecture N. K. Tolvinsky. On May 8, 1892, a new hospital, one of the most beautiful in Russia, the most highly mechanized and with the highest carrying capacity, received the first patients. Until the revolution, of course, in the current understanding of the word, Kuyalyk could only conditional be called resort, even despite the fact that mud baths were built here in 1892.

Only in Soviet times, Kuyalnik became a truly popular health resort. During the war years he suffered greatly. Having blown up a protective dam, the Nazis flooded a park of 18 hectares, destroyed the mud baths, destroyed almost all the sanatorium buildings. After the war, the resort was revived. New, more effective treatments have been introduced. The capacity of the mud baths has significantly expanded. The resort was famous for its table-type mineral water. A factory was built here that annually produces up to 30 million bottles of healing “Kuyalnik”.

Today Kuyalnik is a large association of sanatorium-resort institutions. There is a general resort mud therapy center and a resort hospital where the therapeutic and diagnostic facilities of the resort are concentrated; sanatoriums, including of the name of Semashko, N.P. Pirogov; Palace of Culture resort.