Etymology In 1956, it was named Shelekhov honoring a Russian explorer
Grigory Shelikhov. The name of the city is spelled differently from the surname of the explorer as Grigory himself used two different signatures with both spelling variants of his surname. In 1962, Shelekhov was granted town status.
Development The city was founded in May 1953 when the first construction workers of the Irkutsk Aluminum Smelter had installed the first six housing tents. In memory of these first construction workers, a monument of concrete in the form of tents referred to as "The First Tent" was erected near the administrative building of the plant. However, this year mostly symbolizes first mention of an actual inhabited area as the settlement was then called by the abbreviation of the aluminum plant- IrkAZ, and not Shelekhov. According to
Giprogor Russian Institute of Urban and Investment Development, a Russian
urban planning and investment company, it was initially planned to create a city with a population of 100,000 people. The first inhabitants were the people of the villages Olkha, Markovo, Vvedenschina and the settlement of Bolshoj Lug. On March 30, 1954, the commission adopted a temporary construction scheme of
dwelling houses. In autumn a film projector was launched that held regular movie showings. In October the first ten members of the
Komsomol had arrived for the construction of the Irkutsk Aluminum Smelter. By the end of the year 2148m² of living space was commissioned. Initially, the residential buildings were planned to be divided into different
blocks. However currently, the city is represented by several blocks and
residential areas. By the end of 1955 the construction site and the settlement received permanent electric lighting from the grid. In June 1956 the first workers of the Orel Komsomol arrived on train to the site. Over a thousand people were initially housed in a tent city near
Kultuk. Given the increase in demand, the first kindergarten was opened on 15 September 1955 and the first high school was opened by the end of 1956. ==Administrative and municipal status==