Rants from the Relic - Raw Crusher
About three miles west of Ely at the intersection of 169/1 and Saint Louis County 88 (aka Grant McMahon Boulevard) is a slowly disappearing landmark known locally for decades as the “Raw Crusher.” Some hear the name as the “Rock Rusher.”
The Rock Crusher, as the name so concisely and accurately implies, was a quarry that extracted Ely Greenstone and crushed it for roofing materials during the 1920s and 30s. The Emealite Rock Products Company left behind a pile of green processing dust that once soared above the treetops. And a cavity on the north side of that pile that filled with clear aqua-tinted water. That water warmed before the area’s natural lakes and became a popular swimming spot.
The green fines pile was rain and wind eroded over decades to a much smaller feature and now is barely noticeable from the highway. Back in the 50s and 60s we kids would climb it for a view of the Ely water tower to the east.
But this installment is more about the names of area places than about that footnote of Ely’s mining history.
To the west of Ely, 169 takes the visitor to Kawishiwi Trail which meanders its way to the Kawishiwi River. If you hear someone refer to this fun-to-pronounce right or wrong place as “Ka wee SHEE wee” you can bet he won’t be wearing a baseball cap with “LOCAL” printed in a bold font above the brim. For inscrutable reasons, the local, and therefore the accepted, pronunciation is “kuh WISH uh way” in much the same way as Wayzata is pronounced “why ZET uh.” But since Wayzata is close to the to-be-avoided largest city in Minnesota there is little reason to mention it at all let alone to pronounce it properly.
There’s a place near Ely that locals refer to as “Stinky Ditch” about which this month’s column will acknowledge but not elaborate. While it once may have deserved that name, it no longer does.
Some area lakes have names that locals and visitors have no trouble agreeing on: Fall, Garden, White Iron, Eagles Nest, Wolf, Armstrong and Little Long.
Now, about Little Long Lake. You would think that if there’s a Little Long Lake, there must be a Long Lake nearby. And it must be larger than Little Long. But there isn’t. Why not? History, again: For some reason that is not clear the medium sized lake that lies between Little Long and the City of Ely, was renamed in the 30s or so from Long Lake to Shagawa. And, visitors, that’s pronounced “SHA guh wuh” not “shuh GAH wuh.”
I once asked my late friend and well-known land law attorney Mark Anderson what “Shagawa’’ means in Chippewa. Mark was an uncharacteristically laconic lawyer. He replied “Long.”
OK, and that takes us to Mark’s favorite place, and mine -- Burntside Lake. There doesn’t seem to be consensus about the origin of the name of this one nor about its features. I’ve seen and heard it described as having somewhere between about 80 and 139 islands. You’d think a simple count would settle that but the problem, like with so many things in politics, is definition. What is an island? In one discussion I had online with a group of fellow lakers, one opined that an island was a piece of land on the lake on which you could have a picnic. The problem with that definition is that it would include several large islands on the lake’s west end on which the ever-imperious State of Minnesota has posted obtrusive signs forbidding picnics.
And the size? I’ve seen it called about 7,000 acres and 15,000 acres. One lazy afternoon I studied a Burntside map and estimated the percent of each mile-square section that was Burntside. I concluded that it’s about 10,000 acres and that satisfied me since I like approximations and try with limited success to avoid the extremes of polarizing topics.
But the biggest controversy about this benign body of water is the pronunciation of its name. Is the T silent? Well, sorta. Having listened to it uttered thousands of times over seven decades, I’d say that there’s a hint of the T in the pronunciation by most locals. It’s certainly not BURNT side. Nor is it BURN side. There’s a bit of a stop between the syllables about which no pronunciation guide can explain.
If you’re wondering about my aimlessness this month, June is the month when the mind wanders -- unlike May when the first half of property taxes is due.
Doug Luthanen grew up in Ely and graduated from Memorial High School in 1967. He wrote a weekly viewpoint column for the Northwest Arkansas Times for four years and is an occasional contributor to The Ely Echo.
