Baikal–Amur Mainline
It was founded in 1643 by the Russian explorer Semyon Skorokhod and was originally called Verkhneangarsk (), after the fort built here by Vasily Kolesnik in 1646. In the 1970s, it was planned to make Nizhneangarsk the headquarters of the western end of the Baikal–Amur Mainline, but the marshy ground made it hard to build large buildings, so the headquarters were moved south to Severobaykalsk.