Burkut is a small forest settlement, no longer inhabited, located in the Outer Eastern Carpathians. It once was a mineral spa but the period of its prosperity was in the 19th century. After World War I there was a chance for Burkut to be rebuilt and to develop, but the outbreak of another war and the settlement’s subsequent inclusion in the Soviet border zone contributed to its definitive decline. After the flood of 2008 the last inhabitants left the settlement, and all that remains is only ruined houses.

Burkut mineral spa
Burkut is located at the altitude of about 900 m above sea level in the Chornohora Mountains, on the Chornyi (Black) Cheremosh River. It is surrounded by unspoiled spruce forests, which at the tops of the mountains give way to the „polonynas”, i.e. montane meadows typical of the Carpathians, particularly the Eastern Carpathians. Sheltered from the wind in a narrow valley and facing the south-west, the place features a very favorable microclimate. The name of the village means “a mineral spring” and is of Romanian origin, as are many names of mountain peaks and streams in the Chornohora Mountains.

Burkut features oxalic water springs. The main spring is located several hundred meters to the north-east of the settlement. Moreover, 2 km down the Chornyi Cheremosh River there is another spring, the so-called Little Burkut.

The mineral springs in Burkut were known even before the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the 18th century. The biggest development of the resort took place in the first half of the nineteenth century, when many wealthy landowners from Pokuttya and Podolia would come down there to rest. Among the guests of Burkut at that time was Józef Korzeniowski, the author of the then famous play „Carpathian Highlanders”. At the peak of its development, the resort consisted of a dozen or so houses, which were destroyed by the Austrian army in 1848 so that they did not serve as shelter for escaping Hungarian insurgents.

Attempts to rebuild Burkut
In the 1880s the Austrian forestry administration built a wooden summer pavilion in the settlement, and leased it to private entrepreneurs along with the right to exploit the springs. Despite the Austrian administration's incentives, at the beginning of the twentieth century no investor decided to build a larger resort complex, like the ones in Krynica and Szczawnica. The main reason was that there was no convenient access to Burkut; there were only two rough dirt roads leading to it, one along the Chornyi Cheremosh River and the other, the so-called Burkut Trail, from Kuty and Hryniawa. For this reason the spa would not be able to compete with the then very fashionable summer resorts in the Prut River valley, such as Mikuliczyn or Worochta, which could be easily reached by train.

During World War I Burkut found itself at the back of the Carpathian front, the trace of which was a small cemetery for German soldiers (destroyed in the Soviet times, however). The wooden pavilion, which served as a border guard post in the 1920s, survived the turmoil. When the post was disbanded in 1928, the building was used as a tourist hostel for up to 60 people. Nearby there was a state forestry station and a forester's lodge of the Skarbek Foundation. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II the construction of a new tourist hostel began, but it was never completed and by now it has disappeared without a trace.

It is worth remembering that Burkut, located at the same latitude as Bratislava or Vienna, was one of the southernmost settlements in the interwar Republic of Poland. The name of this settlement was given to one of the two southernmost parts of the topographic map produced by the Military Geographical Institute. This excellent map, the first edition of which was published in 1932, is still an invaluable source of information on the history of settlement in this part of the Eastern Carpathians.

Decline of the settlement
After World War II Burkut found itself on the Soviet-Romanian frontier. In the following decades the full isolation of the border zone prevented the development of a tourist station or a resort. The only buildings still in use were the forester's lodge and forest workers' shelters, but they were abandoned in the times of independent Ukraine, mostly in the aftermath of the flood in 2008. It destroyed the access road in the Chornyi Cheremosh valley and cut Burkut off from the nearest villages. Now wild nature has taken over the whole place. Fortunately, one thing has not changed - the mineral water is gushing from the spring as vigorously as ever.