The wildfires shut the Boundary Waters this summer, and now there's a price on it. A study from the University of Minnesota Duluth estimates that the fires and the temporary closure of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness cost the region's tourism economy about $9 million. The University of Minnesota flagged the study on Oct. 20.
The loss was split almost evenly between the two main gateway towns. Ely lost an estimated $4.4 million in economic output and Grand Marais lost about $4.6 million. That figure counts money visitors would have spent directly at local businesses plus the extra activity that spending would have created around town. The researchers estimated the lost spending would have supported about 72 jobs across the 2 communities.
The timeline explains the damage. The U.S. Forest Service closed the entire wilderness on July 14, which falls in the middle of peak paddling season. The Boundary Waters stayed fully closed for 13 days. A gradual reopening started July 27, and overnight visitors couldn't return until July 30. Smoke made things worse: hazardous air quality also cancelled Ely's Blueberry Arts Festival, which had been scheduled for July 24-26.
To count visitors who never showed up, UMD's Bureau of Business and Economic Research used aggregate phone data. The researchers compared July 2026 against the average for July 2024 and 2025, then ran the gap through earlier tourism spending surveys and an economic modeling tool. Combined, the 2 towns were down about 47,717 visitor-days. Ely logged about 182,000 nonlocal visitor-days against a 2-year average of nearly 204,000. Grand Marais logged about 187,000 against 212,000. The study used about $168 per day as typical spending for a nonlocal visitor in Minnesota.
The study also notes that the actual hit may be bigger than the visitor count suggests. Some of the people who did show up in July were firefighters, reporters and evacuation helpers, and they typically spent less on recreation and outfitting than regular tourists.
The phone data gave the scale, and a second U project gathered what business owners went through. UMN Extension worked with Ely Community Response on a survey of 157 affected business owners. Lacey Squier of Boundary Waters Connect said the baseline numbers themselves were eye-opening: "I didn't realize our little town was hosting 200,000 people days in July."
Business owners in both towns described the same kind of whiplash. "Those first few weeks were just tons of uncertainty and not really knowing what was going on," said Chris Glazer, owner of Boundary Waters Kitchen and Market in Ely. Linda Jurek, executive director of the Cook County Chamber of Commerce, said losing 13 days in July in downtown Grand Marais, "where most of our commerce is located, was very significant."
