page_title: R504 Kolyma Highway
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: R504 Kolyma Highway / History
caption_attribution_description: Truck on the The Road of Bones in 1938
context_page_description: The R504 Kolyma Highway, part of the M56 route, is a road through the Russian Far East. It connects Magadan with the town of Nizhny Bestyakh, located on the eastern bank of Lena River opposite Yakutsk. At Nizhny Bestyakh the Kolyma Highway connects to the Lena Highway.
  The Kolyma Highway is also known as the Road of Bones. Locally, the road is known as Trassa, or Kolymskaya trassa, since it is the only road in the area and therefore needs no special name to distinguish it from other roads.
context_section_description: The Dalstroy construction directorate built the Kolyma Highway during the Soviet Union's Stalinist era. Inmates of the Sevvostlag labour camp started the first stretch in 1932, and construction continued with the use of gulag labour until 1953.
  The road is treated as a memorial, as the bones of the estimated 250,000 people who died while constructing it were laid beneath or around the road. As the road is built on permafrost, interment into the fabric of the road was deemed more practical than digging new holes to bury the bodies of the dead.
caption: A ZIS-6 Lorry in 1938
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