Three-Day Weekend - Part 3

Ely, our destination.

We've arrived.

Ely is a mining town, suffering through the boom and bust cycles so common in the West.

Originally Ely was home to a number of copper mining companies, Kennecott being the most famous.

Liberty Pit became the world's largest open-pit mine at its peak, but with a crash in the copper market in the mid 1970s, Kennecott shut down and copper mining disappeared (temporarily).

With the advent of cyanide heap leaching -- a method of extracting gold from what was previously considered very low grade ore -- the next boom was on.

Many companies processed the massive piles of "overburden" that had been removed from copper mines, or expanded the existing open-pit mines to extract the gold ore.

Gold mines as widespread as the Robinson project near Ruth, and AmSelco's Alligator Ridge mine 65 miles from Ely, kept the town alive during the 1980s and 1990s, until the recent revival of copper mining.

With Kennecott's smelter having been destroyed, copper concentrate from the mine is now shipped by rail to Seattle, where it is transported to Japan for smelting.

The dramatic increase in demand for copper in 2005 has once again made Ely a copper boom town.

The economic downturn precluded widespread renovation, and the early 20th century small-town architecture that dominates its center gives Ely a familiar look.

Norman Rockwell would have liked it. The Ely Renaissance Society was formed and undertook the task of creating an outdoor cultural art gallery winding through the historic downtown.

At one of the entrances to town stood an outstanding renovation of a 60's style gas station.






Using Ely as our base we also toured the mining towns of Ruth and McGill with a few stops along the way.

Our friend Maria had suggested we make a visit to Cave Lake and continue from Cave Lake along the route called Success Loop.




Cave Lake was, as advertised, a beautiful, pristine mountain lake.


Now on to Success Loop. It was, as Maria told us, a beautiful drive.

The Ranger at Cave Lake advised there was snow coming so if we were going on the Success Loop we should go soon, so away we went.




Maria is a female Indiana Jones type of adventurer who knows the places to recommend for scenery buffs.

I had forgotten that sometimes I have a communication problem with younger people.

To my generation a trail was a road forged by a wagon train which was almost always a one-lane trail as normally covered wagons all traveled about the same speed so no passing lane was required.

As time progressed and cars came along, someone decided two-lane trails were required because some cars were faster than others.

Those two-lane trails then became known as dirt roads.

I forgot for the moment that Maria was from the younger generation and only knew about covered wagons from history books, so when she said the Success Loop drive was a dirt road, I assumed she meant a two-lane dirt road.


About one minute into the drive I realized what we had here was a failure to communicate. Notice the trail we were on.





The ranger was right, we were in the middle of a nice snow storm but one we were enjoying.

The three-day weekend came and went in a flash, but we had a great time away.

We found Ely to be a small town with a history, friendly people, great accommodations, and beautiful scenery which is all one could ask.

That's it for the trip. Come back tomorrow and I will see if I can find more to bore you with.