When the Nevada Northern Rail Road was being built, the yards were at Ely City. Ely City was the first station name adopted.
White Pine News, Christmas Edition December 25, 1906, page 15, headlined
ELY CITY TO HAVE 50,000 POPULATION FIVE YEARS HENCE. The
News stated their source for this was an article in the
Deseret News. The city was to be built of brick and stone with water and sewage system, paved streets, parks, theatres and handsome business blocks.
The name was changed to East Ely September 15, 1908 when the post office was established. On May 25, 1974, the status of this post office changed to a station of the Ely post office. The East Ely Post Office permanently closed Saturday September 25, 1999. Individuals with a post office box were welcome to remove the box door and keep it as a souvenir.
East Ely was the chief maintenance depot of the Nevada Northern Railroad. Roundhouses, shops, commissary, and the Steptoe Hospital, all company owned, were located in East Ely. William Boyce Thompson bought the site when the smelter was being constructed. It was to be the trade and fine residential center of the mining and smelting area. It was agreed that substantial homes for the technical employees of both Nevada Consolidated Copper Company and Nevada Northern Railroad should be built by a townsite company organized by Thompson. This plan did not please old Ely residents in the least. They could see no reason why their property along the road through the canyon should be ignored. The townsite-company forestalled attempts to build up the old town by taking up options on all unoccupied land in Ely. They then set up a company that obtained water rights for the spring, east of the town, on which Ely depended.
A few large houses were built to demonstrate what a fine modern community this was to be. Loud prophecies of a metropolis were made and groups of home seekers were brought from Salt Lake City on the Southern Pacific and down over the new company railroad to view the place. Unfortunately, the promoters were more experienced in selling mining stock than in selling real estate. They began to raise the prices of lots weekly to produce an artificial boom. Such high standards of design and fireproof construction for the house to be erected were set that would-be purchasers were discouraged.
Further trouble developed for East Ely when Elyites determined to block the use of the spring. Men with shotguns camped on the hillsides to prevent construction of the water pipe through Ely. General economic conditions favored Ely. The depression of 1907 cut off funds for development of the model town of East Ely. When technical employees arrived to operate the new smelter, the comfortable houses promised in their contracts were not there. That marked the end of the plan for a central copper city. Both mining and smelter towns were built near their respective plants.
East Ely is listed in The Complete Official Road Guide to the Lincoln Highway, published in 1916, with a population of 475. The Guide shows East Ely two miles from Ely and states the route was marked through town and county with signs at the town limits. East Ely had extensive road improvements and consisted of two hotels, one garage, one railroad, one express company and one telegraph company. It was listed as Copper mining district.
The itinerant White Pine News, spanning thirty-nine years of publication, had been published in five successive mining camps, (Treasure City, Hamilton, Cherry Creek, Taylor and Ely) when it moved to East Ely in November of 1908. This was to be its sixth, and final, resting-place. October 17, 1920 the paper was sold to A. A. Sherman, who took over as editor and manager. The seemingly indestructible old journal finally died December 30, 1923.
