It was founded in 1974 in conjunction with the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), near the original village of Urgal, located on the river of the same name. The railway line connecting the Trans-Siberian Railway at Isvestokovaya to the nearby Chegdomyn coal fields had already run through the Urgal area since 1951, after an earlier construction project was dismantled before completion during World War II.