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Mr. Jacobson, you must be leaving the area for nine months--because the tourists are here year round. Clearly, more are here during the summer and fall, but people from elsewhere visit Ely throughout the year. But tourists aren't really the point. You wrote ". . . no one can survive on the squeezing nickels on the tourists." Did you actually read what Marshall wrote? The Ely area is home to thousands of people who are here because of the Boundary Waters. Retirees (like me), vacation home owners, people who move here to start businesses or who have jobs that they can perform from anywhere--these are the people who keep Ely going. We shop in Ely. Where do the miners shop? Ask plumbers, electricians, the lumber yard, the hardware store, the restaurants--where does their business come from? Ely is stable and sustainable. It hasn't been a mining town for 50 years. Copper mines in the Boundary Waters watershed would gut the National Forest, irreparably damage the Boundary Waters, and drive away the people on whose future Ely depends. Maybe that's what some people want. But I don't think that's what the Ely business community wants--if they are honest about it.