Those who love to combine business with pleasure can visit the Ustyansky Museum of Local History, one of the youngest in the Region. Its doors are always open for both local people and guests wishing to learn more of the history of the Ustyany peasants and the Ustyany volosts (districts). The exhibition «Bee-Keeping in the Ustya Land» is of great interest, it is included into the tourist route «Honey-Tour in Ustyany»; the route was worked out to promote the new brand «Ustyany, the capital of the northern honey». The Museum is proud of the picture gallery of local painters. Visitors can get acquainted with their creations depicting the inimitable beauty of the Ustyany Land, which was called the «Arkhangelsk Italy» by the travellers of the past.

Annually «The Romanov Readings» are held at the District Museum of Local History, they are devoted to the memory of Mikhail Ivanovich Romanov, a researcher of local history, a native of this land. His works describing the history of villages along the Ustya River are of great value not only for local people and specialists but for the whole of the Arkhangelsk Region, Zavolochye Land as it was called in the past.

Schoolchildren and grown-ups take part in «The Romanov Readings», they share their knowledge of the local history, defend their research papers making their contributions into the written history of their native place.

Of special interest is a home-museum of L.S. Chernyayeva who lives in the settlement of Stroyevskoye. In her house, in its unlived quarters, she has collected household objects, peasants’ tools, costumes, etc. The hostess is always very glad to have visitors, grown-ups and schoolchildren. She tells them stories of the things she has and shows them to her guests; it looks as if each object tells its own tale and speaks of its purpose. Here one can take part in a kind of a master-class tourists can mill the grain on a small millstone: with their own hands, cook porridge of dry breadcrumbs, try on an ancient costume and sing a naughty ‘chastushka’ (a spontaneous verse created on the spot) accompanied by balalaika, have a cup of tea made in a samovar with the Ustyany pies, the tastiest in the world.

The strategic task of the Ustyansky Cultural Centre is to support and promote traditional artistic culture, amateur and folk arts, to create favourable conditions for developing folk crafts. All the masters of decorative and applied arts, singing and dancing folklore groups, try to collect their history grain by grain like gold-miners, put together the cultural achievements like precious pearls into a necklace. The Centre arranges fairs for artisans, festivals, and folklore holidays in the District area, and also takes part in the same events on the regional, federal levels and abroad.

They preserve and revive old crafts and arts in the District: plaiting of pine root objects, osier and birch bark plaiting, wood lath plaiting, wood painting and carving, barrel-making, boat mortising, weaving, etc. The Ustyansky Cultural Centre promotes the craftsmen’s work, teaches children fundamentals of folk crafts, arranges master-classes for tourists in pine root and birch bark plaiting, clay toys making, wood painting, weaving, baking the honey ‘kozuli’ gingerbread, etc. In Shangaly and Oktyabrsky there are stores where local people and guests can buy souvenirs.

Large industrial enterprises of the District are working in timber-felling and wood processing. The District is one of the leaders in timber felling and transportation in the Region. Not all the produce leaves the District; local architects and builders make churches, chambers, houses and bath-houses on the ancient patterns out of sun-filled pine logs. To anyone’s taste… Oleg Vorobyev, the head of «Derevyannoye Zodchestvo» (Wooden Architecture) Company, has the taste and love to his native land – besides houses he builds churches and chapels, cosy summer houses and water springs’ chutes and facades. Everyone who once visited the White Lake Spring and tasted the cold clear water from the log chute would thank again and again and wish happiness to him and his co-workers. Not far from Oktyabrsky, in the village of Pavlitsevo, there appeared a beautiful church, a wooden tent-roofed temple on a high hill. From afar one can hear the joyful sound of church bells swimming over the Ustya River, and remembers architects’ hands of gold.

Nature created a remarkable monument, «White Lake», a spring with the clearest medicinal water. Its unique history is connected with the name of the local saint, the Reverend Prokopiy Ustyansky, whose imperishable remains have been found in the vicinity of the Vvedenskaya Church in the settlement of Bestuzhevo; there the miracle-working remains were kept open for more than 200 years. The spring «White Lake» is not far from the place where the holy remains have been found; it is here, in the spring chute, that the image of Prokopiy Ustyansky not of human making was found in the 18th century. On Prokopiy Day, July 21, people from nearby villages used to swim for the sake of health and brought their horses to swim there, too. The Ustya people worship the place which since long ago had been famous for miraculous healings of both people and animals. The holy spring is a place of pilgrimage and rest for local people and visitors. They swim in it, take some water with them, and pray for health.