Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Sweetwater Estates Ely, NV

Ely is the only city in and the county seat of White Pine County, Nevada, and it had a population of 3,924 at the 2020 census.

Ely was founded as a stagecoach station along the Pony Express and Central Overland Route, and in 1878 Vermont resident J. W. Long set up a camp known as Ely after discovering gold.

The name Ely has been credited to several possible origins, including Long's hometown of Ely, Vermont, a New York congressman surnamed Ely, Smith Ely, a Vermont native who financed one of the city's early mineral operations, and John Ely, an Illinois native who came to Nevada for mining.

Ely's mining boom came later than other towns along U.S. Route 50, with the discovery of copper in 1906, and Kennecott Utah Copper was the most famous of the copper mining companies in the area.

With a crash in the copper market in the mid-1970s, Kennecott shut down and copper mining temporarily disappeared, until cyanide heap leaching made gold extraction from low-grade ore profitable and gold mines kept the town alive through the 1980s and 1990s.

The railroad to Ely is preserved as a heritage railway by the Nevada Northern Railway, known as the Ghost Train of Old Ely, and Ely is a tourism center and home of the Nevada Northern Railway Museum.

The historic six-story Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall in downtown Ely opened in 1929, was the tallest building in Nevada until 1931, and was the state's first fire-proof building.

Ely covers 7.63 square miles, all of it land, at an elevation of 6,339 feet, and it is 77 miles east of Eureka, Nevada, and 105 miles north of Pioche, Nevada.

The 2020 census recorded 1,695 households and 2,084 housing units in Ely, and the median age was 40.2 years.

Ely experiences a semi-arid climate with extreme day-night temperature differences, averaging 214.9 mornings per year with a minimum temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit or less, and a growing season of only 79 days.