ELY

town, East Cambridgeshire district, administrative and historic county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies on an island of rock that rises above the alluvial Fens and, prior to their draining (163052), was a place of refuge. The Isle of Ely is 7 miles (11 km) long and 4 miles (6 km) wide. The town itself is situated on the Isle's eastern side on the west bank of the River Ouse. In the 7th century Etheldreda, the daughter of Anna, king of East Anglia, founded a convent there. This was destroyed by the Danes in 870, and a Benedictine monastery was built on the ruins in 970. The Isle of Ely was the scene, in the 11th century, of Hereward the Wake's stand against William I the Conqueror. Shortly afterward the foundations of the present cathedral were laid by the first Norman abbot of Ely, Simeon (108194). The cathedral dominates both the town of Ely and the surrounding countryside. The nave, the western tower (215 feet [66 metres] high), and the transept are Norman. Modern Ely remains a small town, catering to tourists and visitors from nearby Cambridge. Pop. (1991) 10,329. city, St. Louis county, northeastern Minnesota, U.S., on Shagawa Lake, at the east end of the Vermilion Iron Range. Settled in 1885 as Florence, it was renamed for Samuel P. Ely, a Michigan mining man. Iron ore, discovered there in 1863, has been depleted, and the last underground mine closed in 1967. The logging industry has also declined, and Ely's economy now depends chiefly on the tourist trade. Ely lies in the heart of Superior National Forest and is the starting point for trips into the vast Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Vermilion Community College was founded in Ely in 1922. Inc. village, 1888; city, 1891. Pop. (1990) 3,968; (1994 est.) 4,043. city, seat (1886) of White Pine county, east-central Nevada, U.S. It is adjacent to East Ely, near the Utah border. Established in 1868 as a gold-mining camp and probably named for John Ely, a mining promoter, the community expanded after 1907 with large-scale copper mining. Copper and other mining industries in the area underwent a major decline in the 1970s and early '80s, however. There is extensive ranching in the locality. Ely is a base for tourists attracted by the region's many mining ghost towns and recreational facilities. The White Pine Public Museum and the Nevada Northern Railway Museum include mining and transportation exhibits. Parts of Humboldt National Forest are nearby. To the southeast is Great Basin National Park and to the south, the Ward Charcoal Ovens Historic State Monument, the site of stone beehive ovens used to produce charcoal for smelting in the 1870s. Inc. 1907. Pop. (1990) 4,756; (1994 est.) 4,664.