from the late 1950s Chemko, and a town out of nothingChemko a mesto z ničoho

In the second half of the 1950s construction started on a chemical combine beside the railway, and the village disappeared into it. The works, known as Chemko, drew labour out of the whole valley, brought blocks of flats and a new street plan with them, and Strážske was raised from a village to a town on the strength of it. Within a single generation a farming place of a few hundred families had become an industrial town. That is exactly what eastern Slovakia did to dozens of villages in those years, and it is why so many of its towns look the way they do — an old church at one edge, concrete everywhere else.V druhej polovici 50. rokov sa vedľa železnice začal stavať chemický kombinát a obec v ňom zmizla. Závod známy ako Chemko pritiahol robotníkov z celej doliny, priniesol so sebou sídlisko aj novú uličnú sieť a Strážske na jeho základe povýšili z obce na mesto. Za jedinú generáciu sa z roľníckeho miesta s niekoľkými stovkami rodín stalo priemyselné mesto. Presne toto robilo východné Slovensko v tých rokoch s desiatkami dedín — a preto toľko jeho miest vyzerá tak, ako vyzerá: starý kostol na jednom okraji a betón všade inde.