The settlement of Akhuny got its name from the Tatar clergyman Sh.Kh. Potiyev, who in the late 19th century, holding the spiritual rank of akhun, founded a kumys farm near the office of the Zasursky forestry. Akhuny is located in a vast forest area, previously known as the Great Sur Forest. This picturesque place attracted merchants, factory owners, lumber industrialists, officials, and clergy, who built their dachas here.

By 1913, there were 44 wooden houses in Akhuny. Some of them were made in the style of Russian classicism, with mezzanines, towers, and exquisite patterns on the facades. After the revolution of 1917, most of the dachas were sold off and removed from the settlement. Archive documents indicate that the provincial land department recorded the scale of the sale only in 1920, when only four buildings remained. Three of them are located on the territory of the modern Volodarsky sanatorium.

The first of these estates was built by the second guild merchant Ashanin, a lumber industrialist and owner of coal mines in the Urals. He left behind a two-story wooden house measuring 24 by 18 arshins, covered with iron, with two barns and a cellar.

The second estate belonged to the second guild merchant Zhuravlyov, owner of brick factories in Penza. It was a wooden house with a mezzanine and two terraces, measuring 18 by 12 arshins, with a summer kitchen and a cellar under one iron roof and plumbing.

Little is known about the third estate, except that its owner was a clerk with the surname Osetrov. It was a two-story wooden house measuring 31 by 18 arshins, with a log kitchen, an icehouse, and a barn, surrounded by a wooden lattice fence.