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.

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.

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.

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.

Of the artificial landforms of North-Eastern Estonia, the Kiviõli hills have always garnered the most attention in tourist literature and reference books. The solid waste of oil shale pyrolysis, semi-coke, was first disposed to the old Ash Hill in 1922 and to the new Ash Hill in 1951. Semi-coke is composed of limestone, calcium compunds formed by heating the limestone and unused organic material.
In 1938, Osvald Tooming wrote in Virumaa Teataja: ‘Ash hill!!! The crown jewel of Kiviõli that can be seen from tens of kilometres away, inspiring wonder and surprise even in train passengers rushing by. The 70-metre coke heap has been named the second Munamägi, and it gets higher every day.’
The semi-coke was first transported by horses, later by cable cars to the crest of the hill, where it was emptied and distributed by a transporter. As the hill grew, the semi-coke transported to the top started being rinsed down the hill with water. This resulted in the formation of a spoil tip with quite an extensive, gentle foot and a narrow, steep-sided and few-hundred-meter-long even crest in the northern part of Kiviõli. The new and old Kiviõli hills are respectively 116 m and 96 m high. The old semi-coke hill was closed in 1975 and the new one in the 1990s. The semi-coke is now stratified to the foot of the new hill. The old semi-coke hill was closed in 1975 and the new hill in the 1990’s. Nowadays technology has changed and semi-coke is no longer piled into sharp-cut hills.

In 1960, the ESSR People’s Economy Council determined the location of a new quarry.
For some time, people continued to live in the villages that were appointed to be removed. Life went on more or less the same for almost ten years until the quarry started working in 1974 and the roads were closed, water was cut off, and the detonations made life unsafe. With the establishment of the quarry the villages of Aidu-Liiva, Aidu-Nõmme and Aidu were destroyed. A third of the residents of the Maidla village council were forced to leave their homes behind and after ten years, nothing but names remained of the villages.
The long time village school teacher Kustas Kraus was one of the last to leave his home. On the basis of his journals Vaida Pungas writes:

“When the iron giant was already rattling on the sister villages and devaouring households. When the school house was fell in the hands of vandals and was torn into pieces. When the powerful detonations tore abart the backbones of the last houses and the stone shingles thrown apart by the explosions poked holes in the roofs. When the situation became so dangeours that it was impossible to stay on in Aidu, only then did the old school teacher who was spending his summers as a free man in his family home take from the wall niche a noteboard and scribbled an addition to other important events of the 20th century – the date of the ultimate ruin of Aidu village anno 1977” 

Oil shale was mined from the quarry for almost 40 years. The mining stopped in 2012.

The Kohtla-Nõmme that we know was founded in 1931 by the English company New Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd, who started working with oil shale there. They built a pyrolysis factory to produce shale oil from oil shale and later also an oil shale mine. An architect was hired to design this English style settlement. Kohtla-Nõmme got a gorgous office building for the mine, a mansion for the oil manufacturer William Dunn and quarters for the workers built in timber framing style.
In 1931, the first Estonian golf course was built to Kohtla-Nõmme. It became popular with the Englishmen working in the factory as well as Estonian office workers. Heinrich Kruup remembers:

“We, the boys, liked to hang out in the pines beside the green, where every now and then a ball would stray, so that we could put in our pocket and sneak off. When the balls started dissappearing too often, then the english hire some boys for a a few dozen cents, to keep an eye out, so that no-one would nick their balls. One of these ballboys was Voldemar Saat, who sometimes ‘forgot’ some balls in his own pocket.”

In 1940, Gold Fields Ltd produced 10,900 tonnes of oil. In the same year, the oil factory was nationalised. In 1941, the destruction battalion burned down Dunn’s mansion and more than half of the houses in the settlement. After its restoration, the Kohtla shale oil factory worked until 1961 and the underground mine until 2001.

Around 100 people worked in the mining department. In 1938, a rail steam excavator with a clamshell of 1.5 m3 was purchased to the mine. Wagonettes with a capacity of 0.5 tonnes to 1 tonne were used for transportation. They were first heaved by horses, but after 1938, they were switched to diesel trains. Underground, workers sorted oil shale, loaded it on the wagonettes, and stacked limestone by hand.
Besides the oil shale factory, the production complex also had a grinder, a laboratory, a power station, an office, support buildings, quarters for 30 workers, a first aid centre, and a sauna.

Sources:
Bobrov, A., Holtsmann, J., Kaljurand, H., and others. 2010. Ida-Virumaa pärandkultuurist.
Eesti golfiajalugu sai alguse Kohtla-Nõmmel. Virumaa Teataja. 122. 29 June 2016
Kattai, V. 2003. Põlevkivi-õlikivi.
Kiristaja, R., Rannus, M. 2008. Kohtla kaevandus. Suuroja, K. (editor) 90 aastat põlevkivi kaevandamist Eestis.
Rooden, J. 2008. Kohtla vaimne eluruum I.

Before World War I, smoked Baltic herring was one of the most prominent export articles in terms of fish products. It was especially known in St. Petersburg. In the independent Republic of Estonia export decreased subtantially, mostly due to the decrease of export to Russia.
Almost every beach village in Estonia where fishing was important had a smokehouse, and Toila was no different. The 1936 map had markings of smokehouses in Toila that belonged to Isvetkov, Andrejev, Konstantinov, and Strandel. Unfortunately, none of the Toila smokehouses have survived.
Artur Adson remembers in his book ‘The Lost World: pictures from further and closer past’:

“A special characteristic of Toila was the fishing and smoking Baltic herrings into bitlings by the local fihsermen. At the beach on the high coast the net sheds stood next to smokehouses, where tens of thousands of sparkiling silver fishes were carried in and gold coloured came out and traveled to the markets: packed in white clean wicked baskets by the hundreds, thick layers of salt cristal on top and between them. And these fish were sold ten for 5-10 cents, almost all over the country. /…/ And we got this gift from the sea on our table as fresh as it could be, just go and pick it up yourself. We would go now if we could.”

The idea to build a rock garden came from President Konstantin Päts. The construction of the rock garden took two years. As the slate shore was in danger of caving in on that spot, the work had to start with fortifications by building a support wall and drainage. The fortification work was followed by building the stone blocks and planting on them. The construction of the stone garden took a total of 800 cubic metres of rocks.
Only domestic species were planted in the rock garden – more than a hundred in total. Every plant had a sign with its Latin name on it. E. Leemets, gardener of Oru, explained:

“We were not planning on bringing exotica to this crisp northern shore. The stone garden is the same natural slate shore, just stylised. By joining large stone blocks, we have tried to express the ancient might of the cliff, characteristic to the Viru slate shore in general.”

A miniature waterfall flowing down to the limestone pool and there on to the sea, was formed from three springs. Goldfish inhabited the pool and a female statue by A. Jasmin was set up by it. Limestone benches suitable for the environment were built and placed under the larger trees offering shade. A limestone steps lead down to the seaside. The Oru Castle rock garden was supposedly the largest in Europe in its time.