Kilingi-Nõmme

Kilingi-Nõmme is a small town in Pärnu County in southwestern Estonia and the administrative centre of Saarde Parish. It stands where the Valga to Pärnu road and the Tartu to Viljandi to Kilingi-Nõmme road meet, about 11 kilometres from the border with Latvia. The settlement is first recorded in 1560 as a manor called Ovelgunne belonging to the Schilling family, and its name combines a form of that surname with Nõmme, the name of a nearby farmstead that opened a tavern in 1789. Growth quickened in the 1870s, when most of the manor land was handed to Orthodox believers, and after a sawmill, flour mill and spinning factory were established the place received borough rights in 1919 and town rights on 1 May 1938. A narrow gauge railway reached the area in 1896 and the station opened in 1917, but rail service ended in 2000. In 2005 the former municipality merged with neighbouring parishes into the new Saarde Parish. In 2011 the town had 1,763 inhabitants.