The Yakutsk-Skovorodino highway is the chief overland route. Air transport and winter sledging are widespread. Agriculture is possible only in the south, along the Lena and its tributaries. Wheat, barley, rye, and leaf and root vegetables are grown. There used to be extensive gold mining in the Aldan district, but reserves have been depleted since the 1950s.
Much lumber is exported.
The Sakha Republic has printing works, food-processing plants, and factories that produce cement and other building materials, clothing, and leather footwear. About half the people are urban dwellers. The republic has a university and a branch of the Siberian section of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Yakut, who speak a Turkic language with Mongolian influence, settled around the Lena River between the 13th and 15th cent. Russian colonization began after the establishment of a fort at Yakutsk in 1632.