The monastery was founded in 1672-1688 (according to other sources - in the second half of the 16th century). on an island formed by the rivers Old and New Samara. The Cossacks built a fortress here with the church of St. Nicholas, a hospital and housing for the sick and elderly Cossacks.

The monastery was the most important shrine of the Cossacks, was dependent on the Zaporizhzhya Sich and under the control of the Sich Kosh, and was considered a military one. The monastery turned out to be a reliable outpost of the Cossacks in the Russian-Turkish wars of 1735-1739 and 1768-1774. During the last of them, the monastery sheltered many captive Tatars and Turks. They were treated so well that many of them were baptized in the monastery, and some, after the end of the war, became monks.

In 1782-1787. a stone altar church was erected here. Since 1791, the monastery, as the closest to Yekaterinoslav, was appointed the seat of the bishops (suburban bishop's house). The main shrines are the Akhtyrka Icon of the Mother of God, called "Samarskaya" and the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Temples: Nikolaevsky with a chapel in the name of St. Kirika and Julita; Cross at the bishop's chambers. The monastery had a school for boys.
After the victory of Soviet power, the monastery was closed. In the 30s, a nursing home was opened in it, then a boarding school for the mentally retarded. In 1993, the parish was revived in the buildings of the monastery, and two years later it was reopened as a nunnery. On March 12, 1998, with the blessing of the Holy Synod of the UOC, the nunnery and St. Nicholas parish were transformed into a male monastery.

The monastery stands in a beautiful deciduous forest. A pretty good road leads to it. Beautiful air, peaceful silence await you if you decide to come here. The monastery is open to visitors, so you can safely enter its territory, visit the temple and talk with the abbot of the monastery, Father Dositheus.