Now that I was staying right at the edge of Ely, I could bike ride to this cluster of homes built back in the early 1900’s for miners. It was a steep climb up the road from the flat where the town is and where I’m staying. The area is situated just below the railroad tracks and back then the train would stop and pick up the miners in the mornings. There is a rebuilt boarding platform there now I’ll show a picture of later in the article.
Somehow the homes survived all those years of just sitting empty or with just a few of them partially occupied. Much of the stuff inside them is period items used to showcase the ethnicity of the owners of the homes. Note that the diversity of the culture here in Ely has more to do with the act of mining then any feelings of altruism by the citizens. Although townspeople are proud of that ‘get along, get the job done’ type of togetherness here, there was a lot of friction between the groups.
The Renaissance Village attempts to show the diversity that was here in the area by showcasing homes segregated by the owners ethic origins but I’m more interested in the antiques so I won’t go into any detail about which house is whose or what ethnic group they belonged too.
These homes are all clustered close together…back then you didn’t get the large yards many towns of equivalent size do today. People often felt more comfortable right next to their neighbors back then, at least ‘city folk’ did. It wasn’t to long before that that people clustered together for protection and the tight fit building style of a cluster of homes was a holdover from those days.
Some interesting homes that must have felt a bit tight for a growing family…
And here’s a shot of the original gate. Out on the other side of the street is a metal fence. By the looks of it, also from the turn of the last century. Still in good condition. Turn around and there’s the homes I’ve been wandering through.
I thought the water heater attached to the back of the wood stove was interesting. These old wood stoves really pumped out the heat. I still remember as a small child, while we were living in one of our Montana relation’s cabins up in the forest one winter how cold it was in the morning when the fire in the stove had died down. Mom would struggle out of bed…or dad would, and fight to get it going again. Not that easy. Fire, man’s best enemy.
But it did completely warm the cabin. And later on in the day, it would be a trial to get the temperature right for comfort, especially in the Spring. The damn thing needed to be nursed all freakin’ day at least until late spring. But boy, could mom cook a great meal on that thing. We spent a winter in that cabin…over Xmas too. We were dirt poor and dad was having a hell of a time finding a job, so for xmas my brother and I got $0.50 worth of plastic toys made in Japan. We were little so didn’t care, but mom tried to over compensate the rest of her life. We got annoyed with her over buying things we didn’t need or want as we reached adulthood but she did that sort of thing for decades afterwards. Sending the family into deep debt every xmas. Affected her much more then it did us.
Some nice flowers on the grounds…
And here’s the train’s boarding platform. We’ll come back to this later…
If I turned around on that stairway, there’s this train station building. A railroad guy lived here for many years monitoring and collecting tickets for the train ride for locals and tourists. The worker’s rides were deducted from their pay as I understand.
Old time porn…
And here’s a look from the platform…the building at the bottom of the stairs is the ticket office, the stairs have been rebuilt, and off in the distance is the Hotel Nevada. The railroad use to end up passing by that hotel…another boarding station was right there on the side of the hotel. Maybe it was this boarding station building that got moved over here. I’m not sure. I do know for sure that the railroad tracks use to pass the hotel’s right side in this picture. It’s entirely possible that the railroad route was changed to take the track to the outside of town where the main Ely Train Station is now instead of passing right through the middle of it and the ticket office moved here to allow workers to board closer to the middle of town. As this town settled down and became civilized, railroad tracks through the middle of town where kids were playing wouldn’t be prudent. Not prudent at all. Especially when there were several trains a day loaded with ore passing though on their way towards the mills 12 miles beyond Ely. 
Up on the platform, the first picture below is a look in the direction of the ‘new’ East Ely Railroad Depot, aka train station, built in 1906. It’s off in the distance maybe 4 miles from here. The other shots are around the area of the platform and again using telephoto off in the distance is another shot of the Nevada Hotel.
So that was the visit to the Historic Renaissance Village. Kind of interesting seeing all that old stuff in those old homes. Brings a bit of context to that stuff. It’s surprising how small the homes were back then. Not as small as some of today’s popular tiny homes, but small. Well worth the visit. There’s a general store there so you can pick up a book about the place, or an ice cream. Entrance fee was $5.
Next time, we’ll visit another old mining area. Interesting stuff, won’t want to miss that. Thanks for reading!