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Category: Community

Door County community news from the Peninsula Pulse. Find information about health programs, fundraisers, announcements, and more to keep you in the loop in your community.

  • Music Man Charlie Eckhardt is Leading the Parade

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    Like Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man, Gibraltar Schools’ music teacher Charlie Eckhardt is leading the parade…and his students are keeping step. Since first walking through the Gibraltar Schools’ music room in 2000, Eckhardt has won the hearts of teachers, students, and parents. With an infectious enthusiasm that radiates through his students, Eckhardt’s influence […]

  • The Voice of Door County: Eddy Allen

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    Door County boasts many natives, but it takes a special breed to be recognized as a Door County “personality” – that person who sets the tone for the peninsula, an icon that embodies everything great about life in our small communities. These are the people who know everyone and everything, not because they like to […]

  • Preserving a Community’s History: Ephraim Foundation

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    Founded in 1853, Ephraim is historically significant on many levels, not least of which is its status as one of the oldest organized communities in Door County. Today, the village’s more than 150 year-old history and the story of its early settlement are preserved through the dedicated efforts of the Ephraim Historical Foundation, established in […]

  • Musical Ambassador: Eric Lewis

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    The first words Eric Lewis utters on his live recording at Camp David in Fish Creek are, “I have to say, I didn’t expect this many people to show up.” And once you meet the quiet, humble man with an accent that is distinctly not of northern Wisconsin, you can believe that he was surprised […]

  • Subtleties in Wood: The furniture of Joel Thomas

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    Customers strolling through the county are exposed to all kinds of artwork – watercolor, pottery, sculpture and photography to name a few. Another medium not always instantly thought of as art is woodworking, unless of course one has seen Joel Thomas’ handcrafted furniture. The detail, the tones of the wood he selects, and the overall […]

  • Cooking Up a Restoration: Ellison Bay’s Savory Spoon

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    Right on the main drag of Highway 57 in Ellison Bay sits a modest, two story home. It is the type of home that a person can drive by quite literally hundreds of times without noticing. It is unassuming and may not spark the interest of the average passerby. The moment it starts to get […]

  • Sturgeon Bay’s 3rd Avenue: Past and Present

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    In 1850, Oliver Perry Graham built a log cabin on the east shore of Sturgeon Bay, the wilderness of northeastern Wisconsin. The rugged landscape – dense forests, treacherous waters, rocky fields – was challenging, as well as intimidating. But the early settlers were hearty immigrants who recognized opportunity. Shortly after his arrival, Graham was joined […]

  • Treating the Whole Person: Michele Geiger-Bronsky

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    Several years ago, my friend “Jane” started raving about the woman she referred to as her doctor. “You like going to your exams?” we asked suspiciously. “Absolutely!”  Jane replied. “It’s like visiting a good friend, a therapist, and a doctor all at once. She’s fantastic.” Jane’s “doctor” is Michele Geiger-Bronsky, a nurse for over 30 […]

  • The Architecture of Steve Wadzinski

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    It strikes you immediately. It’s a long, narrow window, no more than a few inches wide on the long west side of the structure. If it were simply turned 90 degrees it could slip by almost unnoticed. Sure, it might register as a bit peculiar, but it’s not the window itself that steals your eyes; […]

  • The Legends of Death’s Door: Crossing between fact and fancy

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    In Door County, heritage and history seep from every place imaginable. A sense of ancestry drips from the names painted upon mailboxes and carved into roadside placards, while each row of cherry trees in an orchard draws lines back to earlier days. These elements speak to the history of this place as much as the […]

  • Digger Degroot

    Actor, Prankster, Restrauteur & “Mayor”: Fish Creek’s Digger DeGroot

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    In Door County, the definition of what makes someone a “local” seems to fluctuate depending upon who you ask. For some, it’s a title given to all babies born north of the county line; for others, it’s a designation reserved for those whose family trees have roots on the peninsula through multiple generations; and then […]

  • Split, Stack, Stoke: Weathering Winter with a Woodstove

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    When we first purchased our house, I imagined that I would spend some of the days of the long Door County winter sitting beside the fireplace in the main room. Perhaps I could pass the time with a book and a mug of coffee – what better way is there to spend a January day? […]

  • Ice Harvesting in Door County’s Early Years

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    For nearly a century, private homes and businesses in Door County relied on ice harvested from Green Bay or Lake Michigan for refrigeration purposes.

  • The Story of a Studio Potter: Brian Fitzgerald Working in Clay ’til the End

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    “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” This is a rather daunting question for most anyone, usually answered with a wrinkling of the eyebrows and a contemplative “Hmmm,” or with a shrug of the shoulders and simple “I don’t know.” For those people who actually have an answer to the […]

  • Prohibition Era in Door County

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    As the harsh Door County winter settled in shortly before Thanksgiving in 1933, John R. Seaquist addressed the Door County Council of Religious Education at the Ephraim Moravian Church. On that 19th day of November, just two weeks before the repeal of the 18th Amendment would be ratified, Seaquist pledged his organization “to do all […]

  • Beyond Coincidence: Catherine Hoke-Gonzales

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    Everybody comes from somewhere – either here or somewhere else – but in a place like Door County, it can be both here and somewhere else. Take Cathy Hoke-Gonzales, the current Director of the Peninsula Art School (PAS). If you go to www.gbhconsulting.com, the website of the consulting firm she established here with Mariah Goode, […]

  • The First Door County Residents: Native American Tribes in Door County

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    Before Swedes or Norwegians; before Moravians or Belgians. Before Captain Bailey or Increase Claflin; even before French explorers such as Nicolet and Radisson, who began visiting the area in the 17th Century. For hundreds of years before European exploration and settlement in the Great Lakes region of what we now call the United States, indigenous […]

  • Sustainable Homes

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    Green. Sustainable. And the seemingly ubiquitous “reduce, re-use, recycle” mantra. What exactly do these words mean, particularly when describing a home? Local licensed architect Virge Temme, designing sustainable buildings since 1992, quickly clears up one source of confusion:  “green” and “sustainable” are interchangeable terms. She goes on to explain that “green architecture is a well-reasoned […]

  • A Family Man Foremost: Fred Anderson

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    Prior to our interview, I asked a handful of people, “What do you know about Fred Anderson?” Expecting the usual pleasantries and biographical snippets, instead I got a unanimous reply: Fred Anderson might very well be the nicest guy on the planet. That seemed like an extreme statement. How could one even begin to quantify […]

  • The Legacy of an Industry: Quarrying for Stone in Door County

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    A deep dive into the history and legacy of the quarrying industry in Door County, one of the peninsula’s first exports.