Willie the Walleye

Baudette, Minnesota, United States

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Roadside America describes a fiberglass walleye statue on Main Street (Highway 11) in Baudette, Minnesota. The original, built in 1959 and over 40 feet long, was replaced in July 2018 by a nearly identical fiberglass statue on the same site. Lakeland News reported in July 2018 that Baudette residents raised more than $62,000 for the replacement and that the city also added money to the fund.

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Willie the Walleye

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Approximate location · 48.713° N, 94.600° W

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The story

A plaque near Baudette's giant walleye credits a local resident with proposing it to the Baudette Civic and Commerce Association in 1958, the Grand Forks Herald reported in March 2018. The design was modeled on a 32-inch walleye mount that hung in a local hardware store. Local craftspeople formed a frame of steel and wire mesh, plastered the skin and applied fiberglass, and the statue was painted in spring 1959. The Herald described the original as a 40-foot, 2.5-ton landmark that had greeted visitors to Baudette and Lake of the Woods since 1959.

Accounts of its materials differ. Lakeland PBS called the original rebar and cement, the Herald quotes the city clerk calling it concrete, and Roadside America says steel and plaster.

By 2018 the weather had taken its toll. A city council member told Lakeland PBS in July that the cement was starting to crumble and some iron inside was rusting, so it was not a fixable structure. The Herald had reported in March that the city clerk called maintenance costs really high, and that a massive overhaul had been done less than five years earlier. City officials planned a fiberglass replacement built by a company in Sparta, Wisconsin, designed to match the original, at an expected cost of about $110,000.

In July 2018 Baudette replaced the fish with a nearly identical fiberglass copy on the same spot on Main Street, which is Highway 11. Lakeland PBS said Baudette residents raised more than $62,000 for the new fish and that the city also added money to the fund. Roadside America says the 2018 replacement took the same spot on Main Street and describes an annual Willie the Walleye Day in the first week of June.

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