Not even 67 inches of snow accumulation (give or take a few inches) could stop Ely Film Festival attendees from participating in the walking tour of downtown Ely.
Jess Edberg, executive director of the Dorothy Molter Museum, symbolically led a walking tour of the historic buildings in the Ely Commercial District; due to the blizzard, the presentation was held in the warmth of the Greenstone Theater instead.
Edberg began the presentation with an acknowledgment of the continuous occupation of the land by the Anishinabeg people.
After the Wisconsin Glacial Stage ended 11,000 years ago, humans moved back in and eventually became the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa.
“The eventual colonization of their ancestral…land and water is a direct result of the natural resources located here,” said Edberg.
The 1854 Treaty was the first major treaty ceding Ojibwe lands to the U.S. government.
Through this treaty, the deposits of iron ore and gold became widely known. Immigrants flooded the region in the late 1800s, causing dozens of small mining communities to pop up along what is now Highway 169.
Concurrently, the lumber industry was booming, and Winton became a lumberjack settlement just up the road from Ely.
Said Edberg, “Life in logging camps was considerably less civilized, with 90 dirty, stinky men, sleeping on hay, two to a bunk, sharing their sweat and body lice… and this may be the only example of how misogyny of the times benefited women.”
Next, Edberg pivoted to the history of a selection of buildings in the four-block radius around the Ely State Theater.
The Tanner Hospital, constructed in 1901, was covered first. This hospital provided desperately needed medical care for miners and lumberjacks; both inherently dangerous professions.
Built by radical Finnish Socialist doctor Antero Tanner, the hospital approached healing holistically. The turret windows provided patients access to plenty of fresh air, sunlight, and views of Shagawa Lake.
The building has been abandoned since the 1980s. Alley A Realty purchased the hospital in 2015, and the latest update was in 2018 with soil testing. There are still unsubstantiated rumors about an underground tunnel from the Boathouse Restaurant and Brewpub to Tanner’s Hospital.
The Boathouse was originally a furniture store, funerary, and home to the Independent Organization of Oddfellows.
In 1910, the business was sold to James Laing, who “provided the first 1918 influenza epidemic victims in Ely with undertaking services.” The mortuary was located upstairs, where the wildly popular Trivia Night at the Boathouse takes place today.
Laing’s priorities live on in a tale from his tenure as the owner: one night, as he was locking up, he was approached by two miners carrying the body of their recently deceased friend. They were hoping to drop off the corpse with Laing, but he happened to be on his way to the pub.
Being a gentleman, he suggested they go to the pub together, corpse and all. After the men enjoyed a few drinks, they left without paying their tab, forgetting the corpse slumped over on the bar.
The bartender, understandably upset at being stiffed, implored the corpse to pay their tab. Getting no response, he smashed a liquor bottle over the corpse’s head, and was shocked when he found the man to be longdead. Being an upstanding citizen, the bartender dutifully called the police, and explained that he “was only trying to get paid, but had to defend himself off when the corpse pulled a knife on him and attempted to rob him.”
The next building covered was the Old James Drug Building, now home to Potluck Kitchenware.
Until 1999, it was the longest continuously operating business in town at 111 years. In 1888, Doctor Charles Shipman opened the drug store with his best friend Abijah James, a druggist and the store’s namesake. When James first arrived in Ely, he was so sick from walking the last 22 miles after the railroad ended that he passed out in the local hotel’s lobby.
He was ignored until doctor Shipman noticed him and diagnosed him with typhoid, nursing him back to health. Thus began their decades long “bromance.”
As any good bro, Shipman wanted to help James, a notoriously thin man, get buff for the ladies. Shipman prescribed him a diet of beer, and after a month James went back to Shipman and told him the beer, “wasn’t working.” After inquiring how much James was drinking, James earnestly responded, “a tablespoon every day.”
Next presented was the Ely Folk School, once a clothing store owned by the Bloomensons.
Abe Bloomenson, the son of the original owner, donated $100,000 for the construction of the Ely-Bloomenson Hospital, for whom the hospital is named.
The building was then sold to Russian-Lithuanian- Jewish immigrant, Morris Borgen. After sending for his wife and son, his wife could not understand why her husband has chosen this, “most god-forsaken country with nothing but pine trees and boulders.”
Later the Grahek family operated “Fisherman’s Headquarters” in the building. This was also the origination of the “Let’s Go Fishing” radio show with host Judge Shammy Somrock.
In 1995, the building was reopened as the tragically short-lived Ely Surf Shop, a 1950s themed soda fountain and clothing boutique. In 2015, the Ely Folk School took over, and has not reinstated the soda fountain as of yet.
Jess Edberg also hosts History Happy Hour, which “delves into the rich history of the Ely, Minnesota Area with pint-sized stories that are informative and entertaining in less than a half an hour.”
The next installment will take place at the Boathouse on April 15 at 5 p.m.
