The early history of our area reveals that this area was settled by the Native Americans because of the abundance of wildlife to support their community. Further settlement of this area by the white man was the result of the desire to exploit the large resources of timber. As the supply of timber declined we saw the birth of tourism built around fishing, and it flourished into the sixties. In a sense this was an exploitation of our fishing resource. With its decline and with new sport fishing frontiers opening in Canada and Alaska, we once again adapted to a vacation home based economy due to the decline of the traditional fishing resort.
Sawyer County has the second largest number of second homes in the State of Wisconsin.
Our real estate values are driven by the demand for second homes and have grown at double-digit rates. We have seen unprecedented prosperity in our construction and real estate industries. This all seems to be a wonderful scenario until you look at the impacts on our local population. With the rising cost of land in our county and the increased cost of construction brought on by the demand for second homes by prosperous non-residents, we stand the very good chance of destroying the solid base of good hard working people that have made Sawyer County what it is. We also stand to lose the population of retired people living on fixed incomes.