In March 10, 1866 the Russian Czar "Highly adopted the Statue of Settling the Black Sea Region". Except a handful of Cossacks who settled just after the war, migrants from the whole Russia and from abroad came to the new Russian lands: "Rosses" - Belorussians, Ukrainians, Russians; Georgians, Armenians, Greeks, Estonians, Germans, Moldavians, Czechs, Poles...
The Czar ordered to give the lands "to the participants of the war and to their descendants" free of charge. Guide-book of the beginning of the 20th century name the lucky landowners with undisguised pride. Among them were the Emperor, Grand Dukes Konstantin Konstantinovich and Mikhail Nikolayevich, Prince of Oldenburg, Count Sheremetyev, Duke Yusupov, Duke Vitgenstein, Baron Vrangel, Duke Dolgoruky, Count Vitte...
The new proprietors' names were given to rivers and mountains - the River Vereschaginka, the Khludov Brook, the De-Simon Range, Katkov Chap, etc., - because nobody knew their old names.
The date of establishing Sochi as a health resort is considered to be the year of 1872, when the well-known publisher and the Honorary Citizen of Moscow by birth N.N.Mamontov built villa "Vera" - the first cottage in the town. In the Soviet period the birth of the health-resort was timed to the opening of the fashionable hotel complex "Kavkazskaya Riviera" in 1909. The attempts to determine the year of foundation of Sochi didn't lead to any result, and it is quite understandable because life has always been here.
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