When Emily Montgomery learned she had late-stage colon cancer, she began making a list. “A bucket list, before people started calling it a bucket list,” she said.

One item: a trip to Ely.

Subhead: Boogie at the Mukluk Ball.

Montgomery and her husband, Arthur, made that first trip from Two Harbors six years ago and each year the ball has been held since, because Emily’s cancer

couldn’t beat her.

“So you’d better believe we come here every year to celebrate,” said Emily Montgomery, who was wearing a pair of tall canvas mukluks. She and Arthur (short canvas mukluks) were two of the first people to bop out on the dance floor at this year’s ball on Saturday night.

It wasn’t long before the Montgomerys were rubbing shoulders with hundreds of others. The Mukluk Ball has been selling out ever since Patti Steger, founder of Ely’s Steger Mukluks, first put it on in 1995.

“People come from all over the Midwest, we’ve had people from California, New York,” Steger said. And plenty of people come from mere blocks away, because the Mukluk Ball has turned into an eclectic mix of high fashion and flannel, locals and those who love Ely from afar, stiletto heels and battered mukluks plucked from near the back door.

Mukluks aren’t required footwear to attend the ball, held at the Ely Community Center ballroom. In any given year, about half of the crowd wears them, Steger said. She didn’t create the event so much to celebrate mukluks as to raise money for worthy causes. Proceeds have gone to support the Ely Winter Festival, scholarships at Vermilion Community College and, this year, to support polar explorer Will Steger’s coming expedition to raise awareness about global warming.

People come to the ball to support the cause — like Emma Peterson of Ely.

“I grew up wearing mukluks,” Peterson said, though on Saturday night she had to switch to sneakers, per her podiatrist’s orders.

And, like Ellwood Gish of Kinney (pair of Clark’s shoes), they come for the music.

It was the third year the Lamont Cranston Band has played the ball. Drummer Greg Schuck puts it this way: “there are good gigs, and there are really good gigs. This is a really good gig.”

Schuck said the band loves the “immediate feedback” of the Mukluk Ball, where it took all of a song and a half before the dance floor was packed.

There was Michael Mahoney of Edina, who wore tall Navajo blanket mukluks with his tuxedo pants tucked inside. It was his first Mukluk Ball; he and a group of 11 others made the trip to Ely for the weekend just to attend.

“It’s delightful,” Mahoney said. “Where else can you wear a tuxedo and mukluks?”

While Patti Steger (short fur mukluks) and ball co-host Don Shelby (tall canvas mukluks) of WCCO-TV in the Twin Cities shared a dance, so did Karen Friedrich (loafers) of Ely and her husband, Wayne (short chocolate brown moosehide mukluks worn under jeans). Court Lechert (green flannel shirt, bright red suspenders, short chocolate brown moosehide mukluks), came from Longville, Minn., to dance and celebrate his retirement, and Joe Swick (hiking boots) flew in from Medina, Ohio, for the party.

“I like the mix of cultures,” said Scott Haag (loafers) of Ely. He and wife Joany (Steger moccasins) have been coming to the ball for years.

“It’s a time for people to come out of the woods” and mingle with people who have come from less rugged climes, said Joany, the morning show host and traffic director at WELY Radio in Ely. She loves the atmosphere of the evening — the white tablecloths, the lights and lanterns that give the ballroom a soft glow, the volunteer servers dressed in black tie. The only thing missing this year and last, she said, was venerated local canoe craftsman Joe Seliga, who died in 2005 at age 94.

“He filled my dance card every year,” Joany Haag said. “He danced from the first song to the last. The Mukluk Ball isn’t the same without Joe.”

The ball has evolved over the years, Patti Steger said, though what she believes is one of the main draws has always stayed the same.

“People just like to say, ‘I’m going to the Mukluk Ball,’” Steger said. “It’s the only one in the world.”