Orkhon
Mongolia's smallest province, built around world's fourth-largest copper mine. Soviet joint venture from 1974; half the population was Russian by the 1980s. Now 13.5% of national GDP from 844 km².
Orkhon is Mongolia's smallest province by area—844 square kilometers, essentially the footprint of a single city and its mine. Erdenet exists because copper exists beneath it. Soviet and Mongolian geologists confirmed a massive deposit in 1970; by 1974 construction had begun on a joint venture that would become the fourth-largest copper mine in the world. The city rose from nothing: Soviet engineers designed it, Soviet specialists operated it, and by the 1980s, half of Erdenet's population was Russian.
The ore-processing plant commissioned in 1981 began exporting copper concentrate—30% pure copper—mostly to the Soviet Union. When that system collapsed, so did Erdenet's Russian population, dropping from half to roughly 10% as engineers and miners returned home. The architecture they left behind—block apartments, industrial Soviet aesthetic—still defines a city that feels transported from 1970s Central Asia.
The mine persists. Erdenet Mining Corporation extracts 22 million tons of ore annually, producing 127,000 tons of copper and nearly 2,000 tons of molybdenum. These numbers translate to 13.5% of Mongolia's GDP and 7% of its tax revenue from a single facility. The 8,000 employees earn salaries that give Orkhon the highest per-capita GRDP in Mongolia—$6,400, more than double the national average.
A railway spur connects Erdenet to Darkhan on the Trans-Mongolian mainline, built specifically to haul ore southward. By 2026, Orkhon's future remains what it has been since 1974: extracting copper until the deposit depletes, a company town elevated to provincial status.