WATERSMEET

Region: Watersmeet area

THIS MODEST VILLAGE is north of the intersection of U.S. highways 2 and 45. There's a little triangular park along U.S. 45; the village is on both sides of the highway. Watersmeet Township has some 600 to 700 year-round residents, including many retirees. The village is not nearly as gentrified as nearby Land O'Lakes, but the area has become far more prosperous since the 1970s. The casino of the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Ojibwa, which opened in 1996, employs hundreds from a radius of 30 miles and beyond. The Dancing Eagle Lac Vieux Desert Resort Casino (800-583-3599; www.lacvieuxdesert.com) is one of the U.P.'s larger casinos with some 700 slots, a 500-seat bingo hall, a golf course, and occasional headline entertainment. The casino was the biggest thing to have happened here since a large sawmill was built in the 1970s. The "$17.5 million casino complex" and its effect on the area was long the talk of the town.

In winter of 2004, Watersmeet suddenly attained national prominence. The Watersmeet Nimrods had appeared on an ESPN national sports channel list of most unusual high school team nicknames, right after the Cairo, Georgia Syrupmakers and the Brush, Colorado Beetdiggers. Three versions of an ESPN promo featured Watersmeet's basketball team. Orders for Nimrod logowear flooded the high school. And the entire team was flown to Hollywood to appear on the Jay Leno show.

It's a good thing the coach hadn't succeeded a few years earlier in getting Watersmeet students to change the name to avoid its negative connotation of "doofus" or "goof," as recently applied by the bartender in "Cheers." "Nimrod" is a biblical word for "mighty hunter, "but by the 1930s, Bugs Bunny in the popular cartoon humiliated Elmer Fudd as a hapless rabbit-hunter by calling him "nimrod."

Now the Watersmeet Nimrods will again be in the public eye. A likable crew from Robert Redford's Sundance films filmed during the entire 2005-2006 basketball season to produce a mini-series on the Nimrods. What especially piqued Sundance's interest: the fact that half the team and high school students have Native American ancestry.

Unlike many other U.P. townships, the area around Watersmeet is growing in population, spurred not just by the nearby casino but the boom in lakefront property. Real estate prices in recent years have zoomed up, from well under $500 a shoreline foot to an average of $1,000 a foot in 2001. Empty lots have become scarce. Now commonplace are tear-downs of older, modest cabins and resorts to build much bigger and fancier second homes and retirement homes.

Today retired transplants and lake people outnumber natives, which complicates local politics. To gain support in passing a school bond issue, the high school lets community members hold meetings in its library for meetings and work out in its exercise room.

Return to Watersmeet area

PLACES AROUND WATERSMEET TO

Eat Sleep Camp