Despite its favourable conditions, the northern shore of Lake Peipus as a holiday spot was discovered quite late. In 1961, the Kauksi tourist centre was decided to be built and the first 25 tent-houses were put up on the beach. In 1962, the construction of a type-project summer café began. The café was completed in May 1965.
Kauksi tourist centre was well known all over the Soviet Union. In 1966, the centre welcomed 150 hikers with vouchers and 30 hikers without them. They were ensured lodging in a tent and catering. In the evenings, the guests were shown movies and cultural events were organised. There were volleyball and badminton courts, one could play table tennis, korona and billiards. Boats and pedalos were available for joyrides. There were hiking lessons, trips to nearby places, and boat trips on Peipus. The tourist centre even had its own library, post office, long distance telephone booth, and a doctor.
Besides the visitors of the tourist centre, many hikers, vacationers, and tourists from Estonia and abroad stopped by Kauksi. Many summerhouses for different organisations and also summerhouse cooperatives were built on the northern coast of Lake Peipus. There was a plan for a pioneer camp for 800 children, but this was never built. In 1991-1992, small camping huts were built on Kauksi beach. Nowadays they are called Kauksi Resort Village.

More than half of the forest area in Estonia belongs to the state. According to the Estonian Land Reform Act of 1919, the forests of nationalised manors were not to be distributed. As manor forests accounted for nearly 70% of the forests at that time, it led to the predominance of state forestry in Estonia.
The State Forest Management Centre (RMK) is the manager and the keeper of the forests and other diverse natural communities that belong to the Estonian state. RMK takes care of 45% of Estonia’s forest land and of about 30% of Estonia’s total land area.
Information on Estonian forest resources is collected by taking forest inventory. In 2007, 816,000 hectares of state forest were registered by RMK. After a few years, RMK started to enter the lands that were still owned by the state into the land cadastre, and the state forest began to grow. In 2014, RMK’s forest area exceeded 900,000 ha and continued to grow by nearly 35,000 ha per year. On September 30, 2017, a newly described 120-year-old mixed spruce forest near Vergi was entered into the RMK database. The area of the state forest thus exceeded a million hectares.

In 1943, the Germans started building fortified defence lines in case of a retreat. While Panther, the main Narva defence line, was situated on the shoreline of Narva River, then Tannenberg Line, built from Mummassaare across the Sinimägi Hills to Vaivara, was meant as a backup line. The defence line was built by the German army construction company Organisation Todt. The name Tannenberg was taken from a battleground in Poland, where the Germans definitively beat the Tsar’s army during World War I.
The Tannenberg defence line started in Mummassaare almost right by the shore and ran across the highway to Lastekodumäe Hill. From there on it ran across Sirgala, Puhatu and Gorodenka marsh up to Narva River and Lake Peipus. The ditches were furnished with logs and poles. In the lower places, where full profile ditches were not an option, dirt embankments and stakewalls or palisades were built. Mines, tanks, and wire barriers were set in front of the line. The line was also supported by a railway network in the Vasknarva-Kurtna-Vaivara region. The key elements of the line were the surrounding Sinimägi Hills.
The war action reached the Tannenberg Line in the evening of 26 July 1944 and lasted until mid-September.Today, the defence line is visible up until the Sinimäe junction.

In 1926, Vaivara Manor was readjusted into an orphanage under the direction of the famous Tallinn building company Treubeck. The renovated manor building had 58 high and airy rooms. The upper floor was intended for girl’s rooms and the orphanage director’s office and living quarters, the ground floor for boy’s rooms and educators’ living quarters. The orphanage that was opened in such a grand building impressed the media back then, and it was called the first perfect orphanage in Estonia. The reconstruction was finally completed in 1932.
Vaivara orphanage had it’s own farmstead with 24,56 ha of arable land, 34 ha of haying land and 28 ha of pasture. In 1934, the farm had 6 horses, 18 cows and 40 chickens. Pigs were also kept. The farm also had a few beehives and a greenhouse where in addition to vegetables and flowers grew 8 vinetrees. All the farmwork was done by the orphans. During summers, only children of weaker health remained in the orphanage while others were give into foster homes or worked as shepards in the neighborhing farms.
In August 1941, the children were evacuated from the orphanage to the Uralic Mountains and the retreating Russian army burned down the castle. One can read about the fates of the evacuated children in Russia from Ene Hion’s books Saatust ei valita (1990) and Valged varesed (2014).

In 1950, the archeological excavations were lead by archeology professor Harry Moora. A piece of textile was found from one of the barrows from a Vote woman buried in the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. The significance of the find became evident 30 years later, when archaeologist Jüri Peets started registering the textiles. It turned out to be a piece of glove knit with needles. It is the oldest textile fragment knit with needles in the whole Eastern and Northern Europe.
The skill of knitting with needles in the Baltics was thus far considered to have been acquired in the 17th century. However, with the Jõuga glove finding, it can be dated back to the start of 14th century—300 years earlier.
The custom of putting gloves on the dead was probably known only to the Finnic peoples, there are no such reports from other ethnic regions.

Ukuaru, completed in 1973, was one of director Leida Laius’s most known films. The screenplay was written by Mats Traat, based on the novel by Veera Saar. Elle Kull (Minna) and Lembit Ulfsak (Aksel) give great performances as the main characters. The role of Minna’s father is played by Jüri Järvet. The film was shot in Aegviidu, on the shore of Mustjõe River, and in Pillapalu and Kehra.
The score is composed by Arvo Pärt. Ukuaru was the third collaboration between Leida Laius and Arvo pärt; preceded by From night ‘til morning (1962) and The milkman of Mäeküla (1965). It is probably most famous for the melodeon piece Ukuaru waltz, with which Aksel enchants Minna. It is a beloved musical piece that has also been played as the opening waltz on the ball of the Estonian Independence Day hosted by the President of Estonia.
In the words of Leida Laius: ‘A person’s own Ukuaru is one’s place in life, a place created by one’s own thoughts and hands. It means hard work, disappointments and discoveries, knowing your part and giving to fellow men in this world.’
Everyone needs to find their own Ukuaru to keep going.

In 1936, Oskar Parmas, the inspector and Estonian language teacher of Jäneda Agricultural School, reported a startling discovery – 400 meters from the Jäneda Manor centre, on the Aegviidu-Jäneda forested ridge, he had found a two-part fort with the characteristics of a protective structure. To the north of the main fort lied the outer fort, separated from the main part by a defensive ditch.
The first nationwide heritage protection inspector, archaeologist Eerik Laid, reported to newspaper Postimees that he had been to Jäneda and confirmed seeing one of the largest forts in Estonia. Archaeologist Tanel Moora has described the hillfort thoroughly.
Maintenance works started after the discovery of the hillfort. The first endeavours involved mounting a flagpole at the northern edge of the fort. The yard and slopes of the fort were cleared from brushes and some trees were felled. By the summer of 1937, the hillfort was so tidy that almost 3,000 of the first participants of the nation-wide country youth gathering could hold celebrations on the fort yard. World War II buried the fort once again under a thicket.
In 1994, the fort was again being tidied up and by the Midsummer Day of 1995, the hillfort received watchtowers on its edges and a small singing stage in its yard.

The last lady of Jäneda manor, Maria Zakrevskaja-Benckendorff (later Zakrevskaja-Benckendorff-Budberg) was a mysterious lady whose life was full of adventures and close relationships with famous men, such as diplomat and journalist sir Robert Brucke Lockhart and writers Maksim Gorki and Herbert George Wells.
Maria, or Mura, made acquaintance with the famous English science fiction writer Herbert George Wells in 1920 when Wells visited Maksim Gorki in Russia, and Mura, with her good language skills, was assigned as a translator for Wells. Already then Wells fell in love with Mura and in 1934, his love brought Wells to Kalijärve lakeside in Jäneda to visit Mura, who at the time was at her children’s, Paul and Tanja’s, place.
Maria’s daughter Tanja recalls, ‘Wells was at the time an overflowingly energetic 66-year-old man. Before his arrival, Mura was nervous, worrying that life in Kallijärve may be too simple and lacking in comfort for Wells. Everybody, however, liked Wells and he got along perfectly with all the residents, helping them even with haying.”
As the famous writer wanted to avoid public attention, his visit remained unnoticed at first. Journalists discovered Wells when he had already been in Estonia for four days. The writer refused to give an interview. However, an insistent journalist from Päevaleht managed to convince Wells to pose for a photo. After a few weeks of holiday Wells left together with Maria and her children to London. Maria and Wells started living together, altough they never married.

There were four bogs near Lehtse: Läste, Rebase, Pruuna, and Põriku. They have produced peat for litter, heating, as well as fertilising. The first attempts to produce base peat were made already in 1907, when the local farmers started using it. The first peat user community, the first in the whole Northern Estonia, was created in 1909.
The history of the national peat industry began in 1936. That is when large amounts of peat were excavated for the first time also in Lehtse in addition to Ellamaa and Tootsi. In 1936, the state created an enterprise called Lehtse Industry, which was part of the Estonian Peat Industries. Läste and Rebase bogs were planned, a railway was set up, 11 barracks were built for workers, silicate brick buildings for administration, and an office building was erected. A locomobile with electric generator was set up. The locomobile powered seven peat presses.
The peat industry settlement was like an island in the middle of bogs. It was connected and supplied via a railway. People called it simply the Bog.
The peat factory was destroyed by fire in 1959 and new factory was built near the Lehtse station. In the 1960s, the amount of handiwork started to decrease, but by that time, the local peat resources were almost exhausted. After 1975, only base peat was being produced in Läste, Põriki, and Pruuna bogs. Lehtse peat industry ceased production in 1992.

Kadrina Starch and Syrup Factory was the first syrup factory in Estonia. The slate buildings were built in the summer of 1919, starch production started in the autumn of the same year. The industry was named the Partnership of Estonian Harvest Recycling ‘Viru’. The furnishings for the syrup factory were obtained in 1921.
The potatoes were at first bought on site, later the stock was delivered by train and car transportation. The syrup yield was mainly sold in the homeland to candy factories in Tallinn. In addition to the home market, the starch was also sold to the Finland and to some extent, to Western Europe.
In 1930’s, a sedimentary basin was built for the brown water near the starch factory and in 1939 a canal was dug behind the church that led the brown water further down, flowing eventually into River Loobu.
With the establishment of Soviet power in Estonia, the property of LLC Viru was nationalised in 1940 and a national enterprise Viru Enterprises was established with factories in Rakvere, Jõhvi and Kadrina. As of 1960, only syrup was produced in Kadrina. The main buyer was Kalev, Tallinn’s confectionery factory. In 1976, 6300 tonnes of syrup was produced.
In the 1990s, Kalev started using cheaper Lithuanian corn syrup. In 1994, the factory was privatised and AS Viru syrup was formed, but the company went bankrupt in 1999. During its 75-year span, many generations of people from Kadrina and around found work in the factory.

Sources:
Lausmaa, T. 2005. Kadrina tärklise- ja siirupivabriku ajaloost. MTÜ Neeruti Selts toimetised A-512.