Yelshanka (river)

The Yelshanka River takes its source a kilometer northwest of the Verkhnyaya Yelshanka microdistrict, behind a summer cottage near the Volga Railway on the stretch between Sadovaya and Maxim Gorky stations.

Throughout the river flows almost parallel to the railway. From the source, it takes an eastward direction, passes between Sadovaya station and Verkhnyaya Elshanka, then turns southeast, leaving the "Village of a brick factory" on the right bank. Here the river forms several ponds .

After crossing the 2nd Longitudinal Highway , the channel is mostly blocked and filled up. The Yelshansky ravine in this section separates the Maximovskiy junction (left bank) and Sadovaya, Duganskaya and Smychki streets (right bank). The area is sometimes called the Central Yelshanka.

The lower part of the channel is completely hidden in the storm collectors ^{[1] [2]}

Two automobile bridges cross Yelshanka here, a metrotram line and a car tunnel pass under it. In the Elshansky ravine there is the metro-tram station " Elshanka ", and the area near the mouth on the right bank is called Nizhny Elshanka . In this part of the channel, they plan to create an amusement park ^[3] and build a coastal highway - the “zero highway” of Volgograd. ^[four]

Elshanka (Elshanka, Olshanka) is a common hydronym in the Volga region. The name was obviously given to rivers with alder thickets along the banks.

Naturalist Samuel Georg Gmelin in 1771 pointed out the existence of a “second and third Yelshanka” in the present southern part of Volgograd:

“Three rivers flow between Tsaritsyn and the Sarpinsky village, which are generally called Yelshanks, and differ from one another only by the same name: the first, second and third Yelshanka. The first in seven, the second in twelve and the third in eighteen miles away from Tsaritsyn. ”

- ^[5]

The second Elshanka Gmelin called the Vitriol Stream , the third - perhaps the Grigorov beam , although the Otrada located to the south of it was also called the Elshanka in the past. A few more young women can be found in the Saratov region and near Kamyshin .

In the Yelshansk ravine, especially in the upper and middle sections of the river, reeds , cattail , reed and sedge grow. ^[6] Rodents , birds , reptiles , amphibians and insects represent the animal world ^[7]

The city authorities since the 2000s have been destroying mosquito larvae with chemical composition on Yelshanka ponds. ^[eight]