(2000 pop. 66,000). The city of Darhan (elevation 700 meters ) located some 219 kilometers north of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on the Trans-Mongolian Railway, is the third largest city in Mongolia. Before 1961 the site where Darhan now stands was nothing but rolling pastureland in Selenge Province. What sets this site apart from other regions of Mongolia, however, is its proximity to the country's only transnational rail line and a surplus of raw materials, including coal, marble, and limestone. For these reasons, the Mongolian government and its former economic partner, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, envisioned locating a fledgling industrial complex here and in 1961 began building the city from the ground up. Beginning with the building of a reinforced concrete factory, which contributed to further development, the city grew quickly and by 1990 had reached a population of 70,000. The population is as young as the city, with 90 percent of all inhabitants under the age of thirty-five (in 1990). Construction workers and specialists from other socialist countries—as far away as Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary—played a large part in the city's rapid growth. For this reason, Darhan is known as the "town of international friendship."
Further Reading
The MPR Academy of Sciences. (1990) Information Mongolia. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
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