Tutrakan District is a territorial-administrative unit in Bulgaria after the Liberation (the district as an administrative unit in Bulgaria was established in the Tarnovo Constitution of April 16, 1879).
By a decision of the Council of Ministers, approved by Decree 317 of June 26, 1880, 21 districts and 58 oblasts were established in the Principality of Bulgaria. Tutrakan was declared a district center, which included 45 villages with 13 municipalities and a territory of 984.3 sq. km. Administratively, the district is part of the Ruse District. By Decree No. 573 of Prince Alexander Battenberg of July 28, 1882, a new – second in a row after the Liberation – Law on the administrative division of the territory of the Principality of Bulgaria was approved. In it, the districts are 15 in number and are subdivided into 56 oblasts, which have an approximate population of 25 to 50 thousand people. The districts and oblasts bear the name of their administrative center – a city or village. The Ruse district, the first-level district, includes 4 districts, whose centers are: Balbunar (present-day Kubrat), Byala, Ruse and Tutrakan.
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Tutrakan district, which was among the twenty first-level districts in the Principality, included 1 urban and 14 rural municipalities. These in turn included 56 settlements, which were divided into 1 city, 56 villages and 1 hamlet – the “Kalimok” hamlet of Tutrakan.
During the Romanian occupation, Tutrakan and the district were administratively part of the Durostor (Silistra) district. Tutrakan district was re-formed on October 23, 1940, within the Shumen region, by an order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Public Health regarding the proclamation of temporary municipalities in the newly annexed territory of Bulgaria – Dobrudzha.
Decree No. 72 of 24 July 1941 promulgated the Law on the Establishment of the Ruse Region. With it, the districts of Popovska, Belenska, Isperihska, Kubratska, Tutrakanska, Razgradska, Ruseska and Silistra were separated from the Shumen region and formed into a region with the center in Ruse. In the following years, 7 villages in the district were deleted due to merger with other villages or due to depopulation.
In 1959, a new territorial-administrative reform was carried out, the districts were abolished, and the country was administratively divided into 28 districts. On the territory of the old Ruse district, three new ones were created – Ruse, Razgrad and Silistra. The area of the former Tutrakan district became part of the new Silistra district.
On August 18, 1987 , the Ninth National Assembly adopted the Law on the Establishment of Administrative-Territorial Units – Districts, as a result of which the previous 28 districts were closed and districts were created. Tutrakan Municipality passed to Razgrad District.
In 1990, Ruse became the center of the district including the former Ruse, Razgrad, Silistra and Targovishte districts. In 1998, new districts were created, identical to the 28 districts from 1959 to 1987. Since January 12, 1999, Tutrakan Municipality has been administratively and territorially subordinate to Silistra District.
