Northeastern Minnesota has had many looks over the last century and a half. Today it is a place of recreation and outdoors, home to the most visited wilderness area in the United States, the Boundary Waters. The streets of Ely are filled with tourists looking for adventure or to hang around what has been called the Coolest Town in America. It is relaxation away from the hectic pace of the modern city.

Upon the city’s founding, however, it would have been a much different place. It would have looked much more like the Wild West, with rough men arriving from everywhere, every day to seek fortune from the land, whether through logging or mining. It was a roughhewn place where saloons outnumbered churches, and where dozens of languages were spoken, all trying to wrench a new life from the earth.

The cities of Ely and Winton have gone through several stages in their lives. Frontier towns morph into respectable cities, which later become a part of the twentieth century American dream. And once the industries moved on, the cities adapted, becoming something completely different, yet still compelling outsiders to come, even if it was a whole different world from decades past. The Boundary Waters area became the focus of town, bringing anglers, campers, and canoeists. The cities were different than in their inception, but the spirit and legacy of the towns carried on.

There are many ways you could tell the story of the United States through the past of the Ely-Winton area. Originally settled by Indigenous peoples, the Dakota and later the Ojibwe, becomes a boom time for new resources, white pine, and iron ore, which eventually drags along civilization to advance into a modern community, all the while bringing in new cultures and voices through immigration. And when the old ways move on, its residents adapt and remain, building something that looks toward the future, while still respecting the past.

This book has much to say about those changes in the area, whether it is the places people worked or the homes they built, or the lives they lived, but it will be shown through the eyes of the people living in the towns of Ely and Winton themselves. It is easy to think of these images as nostalgia, a longing for the ways of the past. Instead, these photos show what made the cities unique in their early years, which demonstrate lessons for how to carry on, and how to thrive in the decades to come.