8/18 - Sturgeon Bay

Yesterday's weather could be described like Ireland's.....if you don't like it, wait five minutes. It flip-flopped from cloudy to sunny with sudden rain squalls and back again. It was a good day to get the laundry and groceries out of the way. The Piggly Wiggly is small and expensive with limited choices. We've never been in a grocery store that didn't even have saltines. Good thing we didn't need more than a few basic items, although we would consider the saltines pretty basic.


Today we headed down to the little city of Sturgeon Bay, the only town of any size in the 90-mile-long county of which it is the county seat. The population is presently estimated at about 9,000, down a little from the 2010 census. The city, dating back to the first house in 1850, has gone through ups and downs with lumber, sawmills, limestone quarrying, and ice harvesting.

Downtown Sturgeon Bay view of harbor and ships

You might note that the trees in this picture are leafless. We are very short of pictures today and couldn't get one of the city, so here's a good one from the internet showing some of the cargo ships in the harbor. This city has a booming ship-building business. Its customers are all over the world. The only restriction is that they have to fit through the Welland Canal around Niagara and the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway. 

We started off at the Door County History Museum which is one of the best little museums we've ever seen. They had masses of interesting information, all very well organized and displayed. We came away much better educated about the area.


Right inside the front door is an incredible display done by an expert local taxidermist. Not only has he done all these local animals and birds, but he painted a four-season mural around the walls and created a tree and rocks which are extremely realistic. 

 Nature display with spring-to-summer-to-fall-to-winter mural

The tree and rocks are all made of styrofoam which has been imprinted with molds from real rocks and trees to put the proper indentations and patterns on, then painted. They are incredibly realistic.

Snowy owl with winter mural

We have never seen such well-done animal and bird specimens, nor such an extensive and perfectly detailed mural. It took seven years to complete the painting. What is perhaps most remarkable about it is that the taxidermist is not a painter and had never done anything like this before. He said he would never do another one. He's still working on the animals and birds so more will be installed.

Spring-to-summer mural with black bear and raccoon

Sturgeon Bay's opening into Green Bay with limestone quarry on far shore

The Door County peninsula is part of the Niagara Escarpment which extends in an arc all the way from Niagara Falls through southern Ontario and the southern edge of Michigan's upper peninsula to the middle of Wisconsin. Its foundation is dolomite, a type of limestone which the early settlers soon discovered could provide a lucrative product which was needed in the building boom across the Midwest. Lime is used in making mortar, plaster and cement, and is made by heating limestone. Quarries and the kilns to make lime were generally right on the shoreline which made transportation easier.

Quarries around Door County provided limestone for breakwaters and harbors all around the Great Lakes as well as for the production of lime.  As the lumber business died, schooners that carried lumber were refitted to carry stone.

Ice harvesting on Sturgeon Bay (picture from the history museum)

Another Door County industry which flourished from the 1870's was ice harvesting. Ice was needed in huge amounts. Brewers in Milwaukee needed 350,000 tons of ice a year. The meat packing industry in Chicago required ice to pack and ship its products. Wisconsin's cold winter climate and strong offshore currents that carried off stagnant water helped produce dependable clean ice.  Door County's ice business declined after 1890 when shipping by boat could no longer compete with cheaper shipment by rail. 

Display of cherry-related items and advertising

For over 100 years the biggest business on the peninsula has been fruit, especially cherries and apples. After lumbermen stripped the county of its trees people were trying to figure out what to grow. A couple of Scandinavian immigrants decided it might be good for fruit trees. That started a huge industry which has lasted until the present. By the 1920's there were half a million cherry trees on the peninsula. Cherry harvest time created labor problems as masses of people had to be brought into the county to pick fruit. This was finally alleviated when a Door County farmer invented a mechanical cherry harvester so the expense of laborious hand-picking could be eliminated. 

The local cherries are the Montmorency variety which are tart and generally used for pies and jams....anything that has sugar added. We're going to look for a farmers market so we can try a fresh Montmorency while we're here. We'd never be able to find them at home.