The “New Elyites” gathering at the Grand Ely Lodge introduced eight new community members, many of whom left behind recently- purchased homes or full-time jobs in order to make the move to Ely.
The event, which is hosted quarterly by the Tuesday Group, included a presentation from the owners of Lake View Lodge (formerly Olson’s Bay), Erin Ronnestrand and David Schmidt. The couple moved from Florida to launch the business.
“We’d just finished building a brand new house in Florida, and we said, you know what? Let’s sell it, move up here and buy a resort,” Schmidt said.
“We lived in it for six months,” Ronnestrand added.
“Since it’s just my wife and I, we don’t have anybody relying on us, so we figured why not take some chances and have some fun?” Schmidt said.
The couple now rents out pontoons and 10 cabins. They also run a winterization and storage service for boats, as well as selling apparel and ice cream — work they accomplish all on their own.
“It’s just the two of us, we don’t have any employees, we do it all ourselves,” Schmidt said.
They encourage community members to “stop by and say hi.”
Tracy Koivisto is another who left a new house to call Ely home. Although Koivisto’s parents grew up in Embarrass, she left the state in 2000 to live in Alaska, then Colorado.
After visiting her mother in November 2023, Koivisto knew it was the right time to make the move and provide assistance as her mother battled ALS.
“I returned back to Colorado, where I had moved into a brand new house and had a full time job. I packed my car, I put everything in storage, and I was back (to Minnesota) for Christmas that year,” Koivisto said.
She is a lifelong gardener and a clinical herbalist who now teaches at the Ely Folk School, directs the Pebble Spa and sells herbal goods at the Ely Mercantile through her Birch & Fern apothecary line.
“All of these seeds I’ve been planting along the way, these wishes and hopes, are now here, growing roots up in Ely,” Koivisto said.
Anita Norah also claims deep local roots. Growing up, she spent every summer with cousins and family on the Iron Range, though she lived in Minneapolis.
“We sold 95% of everything to move up here,” Norah said.
Now she and her husband live in a “tiny” cabin she describes as a “hard-sided yurt” on Lake Vermilion, where they work remotely. The couple found themselves “in need of a place to heal” after watching their youngest daughter battle two bouts of childhood cancer. Her daughter now is “seven years out” and is launching a prosthetic startup in Montana.
“Just being on the lake and the water, and just being up here, you know, we have birds that eat out of our hands. There’s so much wildlife, and just watching the light change on the water every day has been deeply healing,” Norah said.
Chuck and Jennifer Geist are retirees who also have found joy in lake life. Both fell in love with fishing from an early age, and now the couple has taken up residence on White Iron Lake, where they converted a small cabin into “a really nice lake home.”
“We’re not strangers to Ely. We’ve been coming up here since the early eighties,” Chuck Geist said, describing Ely as a “neat place” to be.
Kay Carter, who started on January 15 as the pastor at the Ely United Methodist Church, and her husband Ian Ritchie are among other “New Elyites.” The couple moved here last December.
Carter, who has been ordained for nearly 30 years, served in Southern California and the state of Virginia, but she and Ritchie sought something different for her next appointment.
“We wanted to move to Minnesota, and I said I was looking for a town where we would feel welcome and there would be work for my husband and that had a sense of community. And they said, boy do we have a town for you,” Carter told the group.
“This past December, it was negative 30 degrees outside, and yet we loved it. The people were so warm, we didn’t even notice the weather,” Carter added.
