Rice Bay

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

From the record

“Rice Bay, on the Michigan side of Lac Vieux Desert, contains a significant stand of wild rice traditionally managed and harvested by the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. The availability of wild rice, and the annual rice harvest, played a central role in Ojibwe migration to the area and led to the establishment of a seasonal, and later permanent, settlement in this location.”
Wikipedia article Rice Bay, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 11 National Register listings published here for Gogebic County · listed in 2015 · category: Site.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Indian Village Rd., Watersmeet Township, 49969
When was it listed? December 2015
Category. site
Township. Watersmeet township
National Register reference number. 15000353 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

25 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 25 fires within 5 miles of Rice Bay between 1992 and 2018, burning about 5 acres in total. 2 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Recreation and ceremony	8
Debris and open burning	6
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4
Power generation/transmission/distribution	2
Natural	2
Other causes	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Fireworks	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
9 September 1998	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest	DAVIES
28 September 2000	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest	PILE
26 September 2011	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Ottawa National Forest	FINGER FIRE
5 August 2007	Fireworks	under an acre	Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest	SOUTH SHORE
30 August 2018	Natural	under an acre	Ottawa National Forest	LVDLAKE
24 August 2010	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Ottawa National Forest	NORWOOD SHAMION
13 July 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest	SUNRISE
7 June 2011	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest	WEST SHORE ROAD

Every fire recorded in Gogebic County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Rice Bay: 3 occurrences, 1 past producer. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Eleanore Lake Gravel Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Occurrence
Lac Vieux Desert Gravel Pit #1	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Occurrence
Lac Vieux Desert Gravel Pit #1	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Military Creek Gravel Pitt	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Occurrence

Every working recorded in Gogebic County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 15000353 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Gogebic County	All 11 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.