Burkut is a small, now depopulated forest settlement, located in the Eastern Carpathians. Its glory years as a health resort passed in the 19th century. After the devastation of the First World War, Burkut was given a chance to rebuild and develop, but the outbreak of another war and its subsequent confinement to the Soviet border zone contributed to the definite decline of this settlement. After a flood in 2008, the last inhabitants moved out, with only the ruins of their houses remaining.

Burkut Spa
The forest settlement of Burkut is situated at an altitude of approximately 900 metres above sea level, at the foot of the Chervchinske Mountains, on the Black Cheremosh River. Surrounding it are virgin spruce forests, which give way to the grasslands on the tops of the mountains. Thanks to its location in a narrow valley, the place is sheltered from the winds and at the same time has a south-western exposure, which shapes the favourable microclimate. The name of the place means mineral spring and is of Romanian origin, as are many of the names of mountain peaks or streams in Czarnohora.

Burkut was known for its oxalic springs even in pre-partition times. The main spring is located a few hundred metres from the settlement towards Hala Lukavica (i.e. north-east). In addition, 2 km down the Black Cheremosh there is a second intake, the so-called Little Burkut.

The greatest development of the spa was in the first half of the 19th century, when wealthy landowners from Pokucie and Podolia came there in large numbers for a rest. Among Burkut's guests at that time was Jozef Korzeniowski, author of the period's famous drama The Carpathian Highlanders. At its peak, a dozen or so houses stood there, which had been destroyed in 1848 by the Austrian army to prevent them from serving as shelter for fleeing Hungarian insurgents.

Attempts to rebuild Burkut
In the 1880s, the Austrian forestry administration built a wooden summer pavilion in the settlement, which was leased to private entrepreneurs along with the right to exploit the springs. In spite of the incentives of the Austrian administration, at the beginning of the 20th century no investor decided to build a larger spa facility here on the model of Krynica or Szczawnica. The main reason was the difficult access, as there were only two uncomfortable dirt roads leading to Burkut (along the Black Cheremosh and the so-called Burkut route, leading from Kut and Hryniawa). In this respect, the resort lost out to the very fashionable summer resorts in the Prut valley at the time, such as Mikulíčyn and Vorokhta, which could be conveniently reached by rail.

During the First World War, Burkut was at the back of the Carpathian front, the trace of which was a small cemetery of German soldiers, destroyed during the Soviet era. A wooden pavilion, which served as a border guard post in the 1920s, luckily survived the turmoil. After the liquidation of the post in 1928, the building was used only as a tourist hostel with a capacity of up to 60 people. Nearby were the state forestry and the Skarbek Foundation forester's lodge. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, the construction of a new tourist hostel was started there, but it was not put into use (there is no trace of it today).

It is worth remembering that Burkut, located at the level of Bratislava or Vienna, was one of the southernmost settlements of the Second Polish Republic. It was also named after one of the two extreme southern sheets of the topographic map of the Military Geographical Institute. This excellent map, the first edition of which was published in 1932, is still an invaluable source of the history of settlement in this part of the Eastern Carpathians.

Decline of the settlement
After the Second World War, Burkut found itself on the Soviet-Romanian border. Due to the complete isolation of the border area, the development of a tourist station or spa was ruled out here for several decades. The only buildings in the settlement were the forester's lodge and the forest workers' hostels, which were abandoned during the time of independent Ukraine. Their ruin was accelerated by a flood in 2008, which destroyed the access road in the valley of the Black Cheremosh, as a result of which Burkut was cut off from the nearest villages and placed under the rule of nature. Fortunately, one thing has not changed - the mineral water gushes from the spring as before.