Editing Ely, Nevada (section)

==History==
[[File:Ely1906.jpg|thumb|left|Ely, 1906]]
{{see also|Giroux Mining Accidents}}

In 1878, Vermont resident J. W. Long came to White Pine County and soon set up a camp known as "Ely", after discovering [[gold]].<ref name=WPNews>{{cite news|last=Hudgins|first=Houlder|title=Pen Sketch of Ely's History Glorifies the Pioneer Band|url=http://206.194.194.211:2011/cdm/compoundobject/collection/wpc/id/4239/rec/861|access-date=August 31, 2017|work=The White Pine News|date=December 25, 1906|archive-date=August 31, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170831230542/http://206.194.194.211:2011/cdm/compoundobject/collection/wpc/id/4239/rec/861|url-status=dead}}</ref> The name "Ely" has been credited to several possible origins: Long's hometown of [[Fairlee, Vermont|Ely]], Vermont;<ref name=ElyName/> a New York Congressman with the surname Ely, who sent Long as a representative according to local historians;<ref name=WPNews/> Smith Ely, a Vermont native who financed one of the city's early mineral operations;<ref name=ElyName/><ref name="Ghost Towns Nevada">{{cite web|url=http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/nv/ely.html|title=Ely-Nevada Ghost Town|website=www.ghosttowns.com|access-date=2 April 2018}}</ref> and John Ely, an Illinois native who came to Nevada for mining.<ref name=ElyName>{{cite web|last=Shaputis|first=June|title=How Ely, Nevada Got Its Name, ... Maybe|url=http://theusgenweb.org/nv/whitepine/Towns/ely_name.htm|publisher=White Pine Historical and Archaeological Society|access-date=August 31, 2017|date=1996}}</ref>

Ely was founded as a stagecoach station along the Pony Express and [[Central Overland Route]]. Ely's mining boom came later than the other towns along [[U.S. Route 50 in Nevada|US&nbsp;50]], with the discovery of [[copper]] in 1906. This made Ely 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 Utah Copper]] being the most famous. With a crash in the copper market in the mid-1970s, Kennecott shut down and copper mining disappeared (temporarily).
[[File:Nevada Northern Railway Engine 93.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Ely's Nevada Northern Railway, Engine 93]]

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 Mine|Robinson]] project near [[Ruth, Nevada|Ruth]], and AmSelco's Alligator Ridge mine {{convert|65|mi|km}} from Ely, kept the town alive during the 1980s and 1990s, until the recent revival of copper mining.

As Kennecott's smelter was demolished, 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 now-defunct [[BHP Nevada Railroad]] ran from the mining district south of Ruth through Ely to the junction with the Union Pacific at Shafter from 1996 to 1999.