- Ely
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/ee"lee/ for 1, 2; /ee"luy/ for 3, n.1. Isle of, a former administrative county in E England: now part of Cambridgeshire.2. a town on this island: medieval cathedral. 9969.3. a male given name.
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town, East Cambridgeshire district, administrative and historic county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies on an “island” of rock that rises above the alluvial Fens and, prior to their draining (1630–52), was a place of refuge. The Isle of Ely (Ely, Isle of) is 7 miles (11 km) long and 4 miles (6 km) wide. The town itself is situated on the Isle's eastern side on the west bank of the River Ouse.In the 7th century Etheldreda, the daughter of Anna, king of East Anglia, founded a convent there. This was destroyed by the Danes in 870, and a Benedictine monastery was built on the ruins in 970. The Isle of Ely was the scene, in the 11th century, of Hereward the Wake's stand against William I the Conqueror. Shortly afterward the foundations of the present cathedral were laid by the first Norman abbot of Ely, Simeon (1081–94). The cathedral dominates both the town of Ely and the surrounding countryside. The nave, the western tower (215 feet [66 metres] high), and the transept are Norman.Modern Ely remains a small town, catering to tourists and visitors from nearby Cambridge. Pop. (2001) 15,102.city, St. Louis county, northeastern Minnesota, U.S. It lies on Shagawa Lake, at the east end of the Vermilion Iron Range, about 110 miles (175 km) north of Duluth. Ojibwa Indians were living in the area when fur trappers arrived in the 18th century. Settled in the 1880s as Florence, it was renamed for Samuel Ely, a Michigan miner. Iron ore was discovered there in 1883, but, because of the high cost of underground mining, the last underground mine closed in 1967. The logging industry has also declined (although some logging continues), and Ely's economy now depends chiefly on tourism. Popular outdoor activities include canoeing, fishing, snowmobiling, dogsledding, hiking, and cross-country skiing. The International Wolf Center has a resident wolf pack and provides education about wolves. Ely lies in the heart of Superior National Forest and is the starting point for trips into the vast Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which contains more than 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of water trails. Soudan Underground Mine State Park, about 20 miles (30 km) southwest of the city, offers tours of a former iron mine 2,400 feet (730 metres) below the surface. Bear Head Lake State Park is also nearby. Ely is home to a community college (1922). Inc. village, 1888; city, 1891. Pop. (2000) 3,724; (2006 est.) 3,595.city, seat (1886) of White Pine county, east-central Nevada, U.S. It is adjacent to East Ely, near the Utah border. Established in 1868 as a gold-mining camp and probably named for John Ely, a mining promoter, the community expanded after 1907 with large-scale copper mining. Copper and other mining industries in the area underwent a major decline in the 1970s and early '80s, with modest recovery in the mid-1990s, when new gold, silver, and copper operations opened. There is extensive ranching in the locality. Ely is a base for tourists attracted by the region's many mining ghost towns and recreational facilities. The White Pine Public Museum and the Nevada Northern Railway Museum include mining and transportation exhibits. Parts of Humboldt National Forest are nearby. To the southeast is Great Basin National Park and to the south, the Ward Charcoal Ovens Historic State Monument, the site of stone beehive ovens used to produce charcoal for smelting in the 1870s. Inc. 1907. Pop. (1990) 4,756; (2000) 4,041.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
