The town’s history reaches back to the beginnings of the 16th century and the rule of Jan Olbracht. The village of Ustrzyki, then called Ustryk, was inhabited by people of different cultures.
Although a period of wars distorted the old order, the village expanded into a beautiful little town in the mountains.
The history of establishing Ustrzyki Dolne reaches back to the second half of the 15th century. During the reign of Casimir IV Jagiellon, in 1496 the town was first located with Vlach law. At the beginning of the 15th century, the settlement was transferred to Iwonia Janczowicz Unichowski from Transylvania. The lease of the village was a prize for Unichowski’s merits during the Bukovina war with Moldova. At that time, during the reign of Sigismund I the Old, on 24th August 1509, the village of Ustryk was relocated. The name of the settlement came from the Vlach word of “ustrik” which meant the place where rivers and creeks met.
Settlements included not only Hungarians, but also the people coming from Russian villages and Vlach shepherds looking for safety. Also Poles and Germans came to Ustrzyki. The settlement was established where important trade trails to Krosno, Sambir, and Hungary met.
In 1727, king Augustus II the Strong granted Ustrzyki town privileges. In this period, Jewish merchants were the biggest group among the inhabitants. To 1772, this area belonged to the ruthenian voivodship. The situation changed during the first partition of Poland, when Ustrzyki Dolne were included under the Austrian rule. As a previously dynamically developing town, Ustrzyki started to experience an economic regress.
The revitalization of the town started together with the series of 19th-century transformations taking place in the whole Europe. In 1872, a strategic railway from Budapest to Przemyśl Fortress and Lviv was constructed here. A year later, another railway to Krosno and Jasło was built. That time is also the beginning of constructing well-operating steam sawmills and building sacral objects: a Greek Catholic church, a Roman Catholic church, and a school. At the end of the 19th century, an important part of the industry was petroleum, and in 1900-1928, Ustrzyki had two operating refineries.
During the First World War, two armies crossed Ustrzyki Dolne: the emperor’s troops and Austro-Hungarian army. In the interwar period, there was a glider school and one of the biggest gliderports in Europe in the nearby village of Ustjanowa Górna. As a result of the outbreak of the Second World War, the town was occupied by Soviets, and in 1941 – 1944 it got under the German rule. Within two years, Germans carried out the extermination of the local Jewish community. More suffering and death came also with the Polish and Ukrainian conflict.
After the Second World War, Ustrzyki Dolne and the surrounding area were incorporated into the Soviet Union. In 1951, during the exchange of borderline areas, the town returned to the territory of Poland. However, this process required that certain inhabitants needed to be resettled. Previously settled inhabitants were moved to eastern areas in order to bring the people from beyond the Bug River to their place. The retained territory formed a poviat with its seat in Ustrzyki Dolne.
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