Ely

Town in St Louis County, northeast Minnesota; population (1990) 4,000. Settled in 1885 at the east end of the Vermilion Iron Range, it was an important mining centre and railhead. Set among lakes in the Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, it is now also a resort centre, and home to Vermilion Community College (1922).

Ely

Town and administrative headquarters of White Pine County, east-central Nevada; population (2000) 4,000. It is located 200 km/125 mi south-southeast of Elko and 74 km/46 mi west of the Utah state line. Ely is the centre of a ranching area, and is popular with tourists who visit nearby Ghost towns, the Humboldt National Forest, and Great Basin National Park, which is 64 km/40 mi to the southeast.

Founded in 1868 as a gold and silver mining camp, Ely grew after the beginning of large-scale copper mining in the early 1900s. Greater development came with the arrival of the Nevada Northern Railway in 1906. The well-known Kennecott Copper Liberty Pit operated near here, at Ruth to the northwest, until the late 1970s. The 1970s and early 1980s saw a decline in local mining operations.

Ely

Community in Fairlee township, Orange County, east-central Vermont, on the Connecticut River. A former railroad depot for the nearby Ely Copper Mines, Ely was in 1883 the site of a miners' insurrection called the ‘Ely War’, which was put down by the National Guard.