Celebrating Winter, Ely Style

© Chris Ellerbroek

Ely Celebrates Winter

Spaghetti dinner—yummmm! Thick sauce with your choice of meat or veggie. Served with garlic bread and salad–all you can eat. Plus homemade cookies for dessert. But the best part is that it’s February, and most of Ely has emerged from their cozy homes to enjoy some socializing. People who’ve been huddled up since deer season chat with neighbors they’ve seen recently only as parka-clad figures hustling between house and garage. Curmudgeons come in from their cabins; mushers mingle with miners comparing dogteam and snowmobile routes; knitters and weavers wear their winter’s work, catching compliments from all. No one leaves hungry or lonely. These highly-anticipated community dinners have been part of Ely’s winter events for decades.

Gatherings with food and friends was no doubt part of the Winter Carnival in the 1950s and Trout-oRama and other winter events before that, but information about those events at Ely-Winton Historical Society is limited to photos that don’t even

have dates. (If you have those memories, please share them with Paul at EWHS.) In the 1980s spaghetti dinners put on by Ely’s Coop (long since deceased) were a way to help XC skiers carbo load before the Wilderness Trek ski race. For many years dinners were held at the Community Center cafeteria, followed by a presentation upstairs in the auditorium. Later they moved to the school and then to the Catholic Church. Dozens of volunteers still work hard the days before the dinner, boiling huge pots of noodles and cutting up pounds of onions and garlic to simmer in the sauce.

Spaghetti is one small part of Ely’s history of winter celebrations. Glimpses of other events include sled dog teams racing down Sheridan Street, an elegant Mukluk Ball sponsored by Steger Mukluks in the Community Center, a variety of fishing contests with big prizes, snowmobiles and trailers filling the Grand Ely Lodge parking lot, a team from South America creating a sculpture from a huge block of snow, ski jumpers from all over the U.S. taking the leap at Hidden Valley, hundreds of cars parked on Shagawa Lake by Semers Park and Sandy Point (now the public access on Pioneer Road), and 60-some store fronts filled with the work of local artists. From snowmobile rallies to ski races, sled dog marathons to ice fishing contests, snowsculpting to hockey tournaments, Ely has always known how to celebrate winter, to bring locals out of the woodwork and out-of-towners into town.

The Winter Carnival was first held in February 1951 and included a huge popular fishing contest with first prize of a new car. The Carnival also offered a royalty pageant for the young and beautiful, sled races for the little kids, a

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log-cutting contest for the lumberjacks and other tough folks, and a banquet for everyone. (Not sure if spaghetti was part of it.) By 1960, 10,000 visitors were expected, although only about 7,000 showed up because of the bitter cold. There doesn’t seem to be a record of when or why the Carnival ended. Although Ely people were comfortable with winter storms and temperatures of 30 below, those conditions, common in mid-February, tended to dampen enthusiasm for ice fishing for those from warmer cities. A few years of that may have brought the event to an end.

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Frigid weather didn’t seem to be an issue for out-of-towners a decade later. In spite of morning temperatures of -50 some years, January of the 1970s saw 20,000 people arrive in Ely on sled dog race weekend, creating traffic and parking issues to rival Blueberry Festival these days. Racers from Alaska to New Hampshire brought their best canine athletes to compete in the 4-, 6-, 8-, and unlimited-dog classes for a purse of up to $20,000. There were kids races, too, and some years ski-joring and weight pulling events. The starting area was near where the Trezona Trail parking lot is today, but at the time it was a dirt road that paralleled the railroad tracks.

Perhaps the most elaborate winter event in Ely’s history, the All-American Sled Dog Race was started In 1969 when a group of Elyites sought to expand Ely’s tourism to the winter season. Over the next two years, Ely became the self-proclaimed Sled Dog Capital of the World. Hundreds of dogs, dozens of mushers, and thousands of visitors filled Ely with canine-loving

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Log-sawing contest during the Ely Winter Carnival

8 The Ely Winter Times

enthusiasm and spectacular parkas. (Wintergreen and Steger Mukluks didn’t begin their Ely-identity winterwear businesses until the late 1980s, so this wasn’t the made-in-Ely fashion of today’s winter celebrations.) Donned in fancy furs, classic woolens, and blizzard-proof down jackets, thousands of people trekked from the starting line to the Sheridan Street finish line to watch the teams. In between they hustled into restaurants and cafes for hot chocolate and coffee, and later from bar to bar for hot toddies and hotter dancing. They rock and rolled to the BopCats at Elna’s (downhill from Canadian Waters), then danced the polka to the Barich Brothers at Dee’s Bar, and finished up the night with pizza at Made-Rite (about where Dominos is now). TV personalities broadcast live from the streets of Ely so Twin Cities folks who couldn’t come north for the weekend would know what they were missing. There doesn’t seem to be a clear record of how the All-American races ended, but the last record is of one held in 1992.

Since 2008 the Wolf Track Classic has again brought sled dog racing to Ely. Not quite as big as the AllAmerican of the 80s, the race nevertheless attracts a good crowd on the last weekend in February. Spectators can visit with the mostly friendly, sometimes shy, dogs (and mushers) at the Vet Check the day before the race and eat spaghetti that evening.

By the early 1980s the Wilderness Trek XC Ski race was bringing people to town in early February. The Pengal family took the lead in configuring the race to resemble the Birkie with 50k and 30k options. The Ely Igloo

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Snowmobile Club provided trail preparation and hauled supplies to aid stations along the route. At its peak, about 600 skiers and their families poured into town on Friday afternoon, ate spaghetti Friday night, then gathered Saturday morning for the race start. Originally, races started in Ely with the long-distance race ending in Tower and the shorter race at Bearhead State Park. But in the mid80s, the Ely-based race director proposed a change to have the finish line in Ely to encourage racers to spend the weekend. Buses shuttled racers to Tower and Bearhead for the start, and the race ended at the school where non-racing friends and family awaited the finishers while enjoying a craft fair and hot beverages and snacks in a warm building. An awards ceremony followed and everyone headed off to a restaurant for dinner afterwards. This change in the finish line was the beginning of what has snowballed into today’s Ely Winter Festival, originally named the Voyageur Winter Festival.

Problems with the ski race route developed with diminished access and increased red tape regarding state trail and road use. A route that included crossing lakes was tried, but the always uncertain ice conditions made that unworkable some years. (Slush does not make for an enjoyable racing experience.) Routes were developed looping around Hidden Valley trails, which provided the benefit of needing fewer volunteers for aid stations and trail preparation. Eventually conflicts with other sanctioned races in the Midwest led to the demise of the Wilderness Trek, but by then the Winter Festival was self-sustaining without the race. And so it continues

Wilderness Trek start at Hidden Valley

today–a mid-winter celebration worthy of the trek to Ely from afar, even other continents! Weather conditions have ranged from the week that set the record for Minnesota’s coldest temperature (in Embarrass at 60 below, although it was even colder in the swamps) to a mid-winter thaw that threatened to collapse the snow sculptures just hours after they were created. Too much snow, not enough snow, but the City of Ely snow removal crew always scrapes enough together to fill the blocks for the sculptors. The 10-day event has included plenty of

© E-WHS activities over the decades including winter sports tournaments such as broomball and kube, concerts, history reenactments, and a beard festival. This year’s offerings include a 4-day film festival that promises to be outstanding and the longer-lasting Ely Art Walk that will have local artists’ work in store windows for the whole month of February.

And of course there will be a spaghetti dinner! This year it’s again at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church and is a fundraiser for Ely Community Resource. See you there!

Story and photos by Samantha Lamers

Trek to Kekekabic

A sharp cry from the lakeshore jolted me awake, my body instinctively alert. It took but a moment to relax into a deep sigh as my eyes adjusted to darkness, recognizing my surroundings. Squinting down to the shoreline, I saw a young pup, Hugo, becoming restless on his tie-out a few feet onto the ice below me. The rest of his team remained curled snuggly into warm crescents, mostly undisturbed by his risings. Hugo, however, continued to whine anxiously at full attention.

I came out of my sleepy daze and began to recognize my situation. Settled in a shallow footprint within the snow, I was tucked beneath two layers of sleeping bags and wrapped burritostyle in a tarp, “cowboy camping” in the January chill on Knife Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.