The city of Buguruslan has significantly changed over 260 years and hardly resembles the provincial town founded by Catherine II in the poor and dangerous Zavolzhye. Today, it is a charming, quiet, and very green city. In the private sector, many wooden houses have been preserved, there is a cinema with hand-painted posters, and a colorful monument to football players at the city stadium.

Buguruslan is known for its flight school, oil fields, and the Radiator factory. In 2014, it became the third city in the region to receive the title of City of Labor Glory. One of the most famous successful emergency landings of a Russian plane at an abandoned airfield in Izhma is associated with a graduate of the local school.

Before the start of World War II, oil in the USSR was extracted in the regions of Baku and Grozny. The state was searching for new oil and gas fields necessary for industry and the military complex. Thus began the history of the Volga-Ural region, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Orenburg. It was on the outskirts of Buguruslan in 1937 that the first industrial oil in Orenburg was extracted. Later, in 1963, the Orenburgneft association was created, and the main extraction moved to the more southern areas of the region.