Ely hosts many community events in Whiteside Park, such as the Blueberry Arts Festival in July, the Harvest Moon Festival in September, and the Winter Festival in February. There is also an Ely-only artist gallery,
Art & Soul Gallery. Ely's post office contains two tempera-on-plaster murals,
Iron-Ore Mines and
Wilderness, painted by
Elsa Jemne in 1941. Federally commissioned post office murals were produced during the
New Deal through the
Section of Painting and Sculpture, later called the
Section of Fine Arts, of the
Treasury Department.
North American Bear Center Ely is home to the North American Bear Center, which opened in 2007. It is an interactive museum and educational facility featuring
American black bears. The center, the only science/nature museum of its kind, is dedicated to helping people learn from the bears themselves about bear behavior, ecology, and their relations with humans. A wall of windows overlooks a 2.5-acre naturally forested enclosure with a pond and waterfalls, which is home to four resident bears. There are also exhibits, a theater, children's activities, and interpretive nature trails.
International Wolf Center The International Wolf Center is one of the world's leading organizations dedicated to educating people about wolves. Founded in 1985 by a group of biologists led by
L. David Mech, a world-renowned wolf biologist, it opened in 1993. The center features
gray wolves viewable through large windows that allow visitors to watch them communicate, play, hunt and eat. In addition to the onsite ambassador wolves, the center offers a variety of educational programs at its Ely interpretive facility and other locations in northern Minnesota and across North America. Afternoon, weekend and weeklong programs include howling trips, radio tracking, snowshoe treks, family activities, dogsledding, videos, presentations, flights over wolf country, demonstrations, and hikes.
Arts & Heritage Center The Ely Arts & Heritage Center is in the historic Pioneer Mine complex. It is managed by a nonprofit arts organization, Ely Greenstone Public Art. It offers classes, exhibits, and festivals.
Dorothy Molter museum The
Dorothy Molter cabin and museum are in Ely. Known as the "Root Beer Lady", Molter lived for 56 years on Knife Lake in the BWCAW. She gradually gained national prominence and extensive coverage in media, books and documentaries, and over the years tens of thousands of canoeists stopped by to visit and drink her homemade root beer. Molter was born May 6, 1907, in Pennsylvania, but was quickly separated from her family and raised in an orphanage. She first visited her future home (The Isle of Pines Resort) on Knife Lake in 1930 and it became her home in 1934 after falling in love with the area. Until the mid/late 1940s, the Isle of Pines resort was typical of many north woods resorts. It was reachable by seaplanes and motorboats, and later by snowmobiles as they came into use. After a 1949 flight ban Molter began importing her supplies for root beer by boat and reusing glass bottles that she stored in a shed. Canoeists stopping by would be asked to bring supplies from town and would commonly leave an oar behind, hundreds of which are still on display at the museum. Molter's land was taken from her in the 1964 Wilderness Act, however, after a nationwide uproar and her friends protesting, she was allowed to temporarily stay as long as the resort was closed down. Along with Molters land being taken, nearly all motorized transportation to Molter's lodge was eliminated, residences, buildings, business and the few roads from the wilderness were removed, leaving Molter as the only full-time resident in a wilderness area three times the size of
Rhode Island. Later she was given a lifetime pardon to live in her home. After her death, her multiple cabins, all her belongings, and other parts of her residence were dismantled and moved to Ely by boat. They were all then reconstructed there, and the Dorothy Molter Museum was established, and to this day sells her root beer to preserve her legacy. The museum offers programs about the history of the area twice a month during the summer. The museum mission statement reads: :The mission depicts local history through artifacts, photographs, oral histories, numerous videos/DVDs; displays include Ojibwe, fur trade, mining, logging, immigration, voyageurs, and Footprints Across The Wilderness, the history of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with a new exhibit each summer. They cover the history of the area from prehistoric times through mining, immigration and logging. Arts displays include Carl Gawboy and Albin Zaverl.
Historically significant structures in and around Ely The
U.S. National Register of Historic Places deems certain structures worthy of preservation for their historical significance. Several sites in and around Ely have been placed on the Register's list: Bull-of-the-Woods Logging Scow, Ely State Theater, Listening Point, and Tanner's Hospital.
Listening Point was the private retreat of conservationist
Sigurd Olson on Burntside Lake. Olson acquired the property in 1956, then purchased a log cabin and a log sauna elsewhere that he had dismantled, moved to Listening Point, and reassembled. In 1998 the Listening Point Foundation was organized to preserve the property as an open-air museum to Olson. The
Ely State Theater is a 1936
Streamline Moderne design, epitomizing the small-town commissions of leading regional theater designers, Minneapolis architects
Liebenberg & Kaplan.
Tanner's Hospital is a former hospital building built in 1901 as a moneymaking enterprise due to the area's high disease rate, a consequence of low investment in sanitation infrastructure in the mining boom towns of the Iron Range, where the long-term existence of any given community was unpredictable. The
Bull-of-the-Woods Logging Scow is a small paddle steamer wrecked in Burntside Lake. It was built around 1893 for one of the lumber companies in the area. There were at least a few of these vessels, locally known as "alligators" or "gators", in operation in northeastern Minnesota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They could tow timber rafts, hoist logs, navigate shallow waters, and even pull themselves across dry land. It is the only known surviving example of its type. ==Parks and recreation==