Skrunda
Encyclopedia
Skrunda is a town
Town
A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...

 in Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

. It lies 150 km west of the capital city Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

.

Skrunda-1

Skrunda is best known as the town nearest the former Soviet secret city, Skrunda-1
Skrunda-1
Skrunda-1 is a ghost town located 5 km to the north of Skrunda, in Raņķi parish, Latvia. It was the site of two Hen House radar installations constructed in the 1960s...

, which housed two major radar installations during the cold war
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 period. Skrunda-1 is currently a ghost town
Ghost town
A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...

, as the last remaining residents abandoned the town in 1998. The Soviet Union, when building secret installations, usually left the name of the settlement off the map and referred to them literally by the name of the nearest town, plus a number (usually a 1).

In February 2010 the town sold to an unknown Russian investor for $3.1 Million. No word yet on what the winning bidder will do with 110-acre (45 hectare) property that is located in western Latvia about 95 miles (150 kilometers) from Riga.

External links

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