History

Saint Alexios Greek Orthodox Chapel of Ely, Nevada shares the remote high desert of White Pine County with its sister community, Saint Barbara Chapel of McGill, together forming what has been described as among the tiniest Greek Orthodox communities anywhere in the United States. The two chapels represent the easternmost communities of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco, situated along what Life magazine once dubbed the Loneliest Road in America.

The Ely chapel came into being in an unusual way. Around 1940, the Saint Barbara community in nearby McGill was making plans to build a fellowship hall in Ely. At the last moment, the Greek Orthodox faithful of Ely decided they wanted to establish their own parish rather than a satellite facility, and Saint Alexios Greek Orthodox Chapel was founded in 1941 at the corner of 12th Street and Lyons Avenue, giving the copper mining community of Ely its own house of Orthodox worship.

Many years earlier, in the mining boom years of the early twentieth century, both Ely and McGill had been vibrant Greek Orthodox communities with several hundred members each, their congregations fueled by the Greek workers drawn to the copper mines of White Pine County. As the mining economy contracted through the mid-twentieth century, both communities shrank dramatically. What remains is a small but devoted handful of faithful who have kept the doors of Saint Alexios open for more than eighty years, preserving an Orthodox Christian presence in one of the most remote corners of Nevada.

Saint Alexios Greek Orthodox Chapel at 12th Street and Lyons Avenue in Ely serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of White Pine County as a chapel of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.