Mikro Dereio

Mikro Dereio (Modern: Μικρό Δέρειο, Katharevoussa: -ον -on) is a village in the northcentral part of the Evros Prefecture in Greece. It is the most populated municipal district of the municipality of Orfeas. The location is near the heart of the prefectural mainland and is centrally located between the Bulgarian and the Turkish borders as well as the Evros River. Protokklisi is linked with the road connecting GR-51/E85 (Alexandroupoli - Soufli - Orestiada - Ormenio) and Mega Dereio with no road connecting Bulgaria or any trails, the trails are fenced. Its 2001 population was 545 for the settlement and 1,120 for the municipal district. The area are hilly and forested while the mountains dominate the west, most of the area are forested, farmlands are within the village.

Location
It is in the Eastern Rhodope mountains, the Erythropotamos is 20 km northeast by the Bulgarian-Greek border. Mega Dereio is located about 90 km southwest of Orestiada, 65 km west-southwest of Didymoteicho, west-northwest of the Evros River and the Turkish border, 70 km north of Alexandroupoli, northeast of the Greek capital city of Athens and east-southeast of the Bulgarian border.

Settlement

 * Agriani

Nearest place

 * Mega Dereio
 * Amorio, east-southeast (distance: 7 km)

History
The village was founded by the Ottoman Turks in the 14th century, its name was known as (Малък Дервент Malyk Dervent, Turkish: Malik Dervent (Little-)). According to Anastas Razbojnikov, its 1830 population was 210 Bulgarian families/houses, 256 in 1878, 220 in 1912 of which 200 were Bulgarian exarchists, revoltions occurred during the pre-Bulgarian rule. According to professor Lyubomir Miletich, the 1912 population had around 200 Bulgarian families. In August 8, 1913, the village battled with the Turks and handed to the Bulgarians. At the end of the Bulgarian rule, 200 Bulgarians moved northward into the remainder of Bulgaria which is now north, the remainder of the Turks were pushed to the western portion of today's Turkey. During the Greco Turkish War (1919-1922), refugees east of the Evros river and from Asia Minor arrived into the village. It became entirely Mikro Dereio after the annexation. After World War II and the Greek Civil War, many of its buildings were rebuilt. Electricity and automobiles arrived in the 1960s, it was linked with pavement in the late-20th century, television arrived in the 1980s. Internet and computers arrived in the late-1990s. The village's lost three fourths of its population between 1981 and 1991 and two thirds between 1991 and 2001 totaling to nearly half between 1981 and 2001, its inhabitants left for the larger cities and outside Greece.

Person

 * Angel Popkirov (Ангел Попкиров, 1881-?), Bulgarian revolutionary leader, member of VMORO