For a long time it was believed that the city of Balakovo was founded in 1762, but later a document dated 1738 was found in the archives of St. Petersburg, which mentions the Cossack meadow possession of Balakov Yurt, located two versts from the Volga. December 14, 1762 Empress of Russia Catherine II issued a manifesto calling on the Old Believers, who had fled to Poland, to return from abroad to Russia and settle on the lands between the Bolshoy and Maly Irgiz rivers. To the zealots of the old faith, 70,000 dessiatins (76,300 hectares) of the best land on the left bank of the Volga were allocated for use. Returned Old Believers founded several new settlements, including the village of Balakovo. In 1861 there were 2,700 people living in the village of Balakovo. The convenient location on the shipping routes helped the village to grow rapidly due to wheat trade. In one season, up to 10 million poods of grain were sent from Balakovo. More than 300 spacious barns that stood on the shore of Balakovo, allowed to store grain from harvest to harvest. In the 1860s for one navigation, from Balakovo could go up to 180 barges with cargo. Another commodity, to which the Balakovo merchants traded in huge quantities, was the forest. Balakovo was an intermediary between the forest provinces of the Upper Volga region and the forestless left bank of the Volga. Here, from such rivers as Kama, Belaya, Vyatka, it was brought annually up to 500 thousand poods of firewood and up to three million poods of forest building materials. Part of this forest was processed in two sawmills.
