Until 1881, Caribrod was a small village, but thanks to settlers from the town of Pirot and the villages of Pirot, it became a city, which grew rapidly after the construction of the railway from Niš to Sofia and Vakarel. In honor of Georgi Dimitrov, on February 28, 1950, the name of the city was changed to Dimitrovgrad. Caribrod is an old village mentioned in Ottoman writings from 1576 as Caribrod.
The surroundings of Dimitrovgrad consist of a hilly and mountainous landscape elongated in the southwest-northeast direction. As a whole, it is a hilly-mountainous region through which a part of the Nišava valley is cut, which is narrow and short with a southeast-northwest direction.
Most of the inhabitants of the Dimitrovgrad villages engaged in animal husbandry. Almost every household kept sheep, goats, cows… Animal husbandry in this region represented an important segment of the local economy and as such has a significant role in the preservation of cultural heritage. Over the past few decades, animal husbandry has been on a marked downward trajectory, which clearly coincides with the demographic trends in this area.
In the middle of the 20th century, more precisely in the early 1950s, the number of inhabitants in the villages decreased significantly. Due to industrialization and a better life in the city, most of the inhabitants move to Dimitrovgrad and Pirot.
There were about 15,000 sheep in the villages of Gornji Visok, today there are a few hundred left. According to the 1880 census, the villages in the municipality had an average of between 500 and 600 inhabitants. Today, the villages are abandoned and deserted. The fates of schools and churches in the villages are left to the test of time.
