Before softball tournaments, cornhole boards and festival fun runs filled summer calendars, southern Wisconsin crowds gathered to watch volunteer firefighters point high-pressure hoses at one another and settle community rivalries with water.

Known simply as water fights, the contests were once among the region’s most anticipated warm-weather attractions. In New Glarus, their popularity was surpassed perhaps only by adult baseball, when hometown teams and visiting clubs could fill an afternoon with the kind of local loyalty now associated with high school sports.

Water fights were not playful backyard battles. They were organized competitions involving fire departments, heavy hose lines, powerful streams and crews prepared to be knocked down, drenched and pushed across wet ground.

For New Glarus residents, few opponents mattered more than Belleville.

A Rivalry More Than a Century Old