Tyrnyauz

Town in Kabardino-Balkariya, republican subordination, 89 km south-west of Nalchik. Located on the northern slope of the Greater Caucasus, in the headstream of the Baksan River (the basin of the Terek), at height of 1,115-1,285 m above the sea level. Near Tyrnyauz, along the valley of the Baksan River, there is a highway to the bottom of Mount Elbrus. Population (1992 est.) 31.1 thousand, (1979 est.) 21 thousand.

The settlement of Tyrnyauz was founded in the 1930s at the site of a Balkarian village of Kirkhozhan due to development of a deposit of tungsten-molybdenum ores (discovered in 1934, developed since 1940). Town since 1955.

By the beginning of the 1990s, Tyrnyauz had an integrated tungsten-molybdenum works (digging and underground winning of ore); a low-voltage electroinstrumentation factory, a silica brickworks, a concrete product plant.

The town is located on narrow river terraces and terrace-like slopes of a deep valley of the Baksan. Three- and four-storeyed residential houses built primarily in the 1940s-1950s and industrial structures are located between rock yields. In the 1980s, a microdistrict of 9- and 14-storeyed residential houses was erected. Buildings of the dressing-mill of the integrated tungsten-molybdenum works are on a steeply rising rock. The top of a rock is equipped with two strings of an airlift to deliver workers to the mine at the height of 243 m above the town.