The outpost served as the administrative center for managing katorga, prisons, exile settlements, and the whole island until the October Revolution.

Anton Chekhov lived here in 1890 while gathering material for his book The Sakhalin Island.

According to the 1897 census, the settlement had a population of 3,860, 87% male and 13% female, and 69,6% Russian, 6.9% Tatar, 6.8% Polish, 5.5% Ukrainian, 1.5% German, 1.2% Armenian, 1.2% Jewish, 1.1% Circassian.

[citation needed] During the Russian Civil War, the town was under the control of Admiral Alexander Kolchak in 1918–1920, before being occupied by the Japanese until 1925.

[4] The economy of Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky is mainly reliant on its harbor, the oldest and previously most important on Sakhalin, and the mining of black coal in the local area.