Resort Park and Muravyov Fountain

The open basin conceals the mouth of a borehole that goes about one hundred eighteen meters down. The water-bearing layer itself pushes mineral water into the pipe, and it shoots almost ten meters into the air. A glass pavilion once stood over the jet and held in the salt aerosol; people who came to the resort breathed this mist inside. The pavilion is gone, and since the nineties the spring has remained uncovered.

On September tenth, eighteen fifty-eight, drilling masters began boring into the ground at this very spot. The Staraya Russa Mineral Waters Establishment needed more brine: patients took salt baths, and the water was channeled into therapeutic pools and artificial lakes. Resort Park was a treatment area, with bathhouses, drinking pavilions, and covered galleries running between them.

The order for the new spring was given by Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, Minister of State Property, who was seeking to increase the flow of water to the treatment facility. His decision cost the treasury seven thousand rubles in silver. Drilling continued for more than a year. On September eighteenth, eighteen fifty-nine, the borehole was accepted in the presence of a commission.

At a depth of about one hundred eighteen meters, the drill reached a pressurized layer. No pump was needed: mineral water rose through the pipe by itself and sent a jet almost ten meters into the air. The new spring was named after Muravyov. The name preserved neither the surname of an estate owner nor the memory of a local doctor, but the surname of the official who ordered the drilling to be paid for.

The result soon sparked a dispute. Dr Fyodor Weber, a specialist in Staraya Russa waters, calculated that repairing the former Directors’ Spring had cost less, and that it alone could provide baths for tens of thousands of patients. Muravyov water proved too salty for systematic drinking treatment. Most of it was used for the resort's practical needs and carried through an underground pipe into an artificial lake, then into the Voye stream. The striking jet was the visible part of a working borehole.

Later, engineers deepened it and replaced the wooden pipes with copper ones. A glazed canopy was built over the fountain: it held back the salt spray, and resort visitors came there to breathe the water mist. After wartime destruction, the fountain was restored in nineteen fifty-five. In nineteen eighty-two, a new metal dome was installed over it, but the airborne salt quickly corroded the structure, and it was dismantled.

Since nineteen ninety-five, the spring has once again flowed in the open air. All that remains of the vanished canopy is an open basin, and beneath it the borehole drilled on Muravyov's orders continues to operate.