Category: History
Door County is rich in history, from its most prominent founding citizens to the business leaders who embraced tourism to make it the destination it is today. It’s a history of orchards, farming, and fishermen, but also of potters, artists, and writers. But more than anything, it’s a history told in the lives of the remarkable people who’ve called it home for a spell or a lifetime. Door County Pulse tells them all.
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The Alexander Noble House in “Olde Towne” Fish Creek
“A jolly good town is old Fish Creek, The best on the pike I know: With its back to the rock and its face to the sea, Where the rollicking breezes blow. As snug as a bug in an old woolen rug, It lies there embowered in green: You may go where you like, on […]
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“Grudge” – the Enduring Rivalry between Sister Bay and Baileys Harbor
The annals of sport are filled with storied rivalries. They’re called clashes, battles, and feuds. In Door County League baseball, one of the best is referred to simply as the “Grudge.” It’s Sister Bay versus Baileys Harbor – Bays versus A’s, North versus South. And in its heyday, it featured as much intensity as an […]
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The Harvest of 1945: German POW Camps Filled Door County’s Labor Shortage
During WWII, Door County’s orchards faced severe labor shortages. German Prisoners of War filled the gaps and saved a harvest.
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Door County League Baseball – A Local Tradition
The Door County League is an amateur baseball league made up of eight teams with contests held each Sunday at 1 :30 p.m., always beginning on Mother’s Day. Most estimate the level of competition is somewhere near or just a notch below Division III college baseball, with players ranging in age from about 14 to […]
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Clearing the Virgin Forests: Door County’s Logging Past
More than a century ago, just as today, the splendor of Door County’s natural resources attracted droves of people to the peninsula. But in the last half of the 19th century, they came not to appreciate and relax, but to chop and clear the area’s towering virgin forests. When Door County was established by the […]
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Rock Island: The Untrammeled Frontier
As the passenger ferry “Karfi” pulls up to the break-wall at Rock Island, I’m cold, drenched and reminded just how much this place feels like the outer edge of all known civilization. Barring the sound of Karfi’s engine and the monumental stone boathouse on the shore, I could be Jean Nicolet stumbling onto this untrammeled […]
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The Toft Family: Preserving a Piece of the Peninsula
Most Door County residents and visitors, if they know of the Toft Family at all, have probably heard only of “Emma Who Saved The Ridges,” as a Milwaukee Journal Magazine headline once referred to Emma Toft. Emma was certainly involved in protecting the area known as The Ridges Sanctuary, although many others were equally involved. […]
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Fyr Bal: 50 Years of Celebration in Ephraim
Each year on the weekend closest to the summer solstice, the Village of Ephraim undergoes a transformation. Normally a tranquil lakeside community, known for its pastoral atmosphere and deep sense of history, during this weekend the village unfolds into a flurry of activity for ‘Fyr Bal’—one of Door County’s best known, if least understood, cultural […]
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Rod “Chief” Billerbeck A Legendary Presence in Northern Door
The numbers are the first thing you notice, and how could you not? They pop off the page at you: 41 yeas as head baseball coach, 377 wins – a state record when he retired, 25 league or conference titles, and one state championship. I began the task of writing about the man responsible for […]
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The Risky Careers of Christmas Schooner Captains
When the late summer storms on the Great Lakes began to stir, and the gales of November rattled the very souls of the schooners, the lake captains saw their transport business diminish. But there came a realization of a new seasonal run — Christmas trees! Christmas trees for those cities and communities where pine forests […]