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New Permanent Exhibit at Historical Museum

The Door County Historical Museum announces the grand opening of a new permanent exhibit. The Cardy Site Collection of Paleo-Indian stone tools was donated to the museum by Darrel Cardy in 2016 and will go on view for the first time on Aug. 18.

The collection contains fluted spear points, end scrapers, flake tools and various other artifacts that are distinctly different from and much older than the stone tools used by the Native Americans who were encountered by the earliest European explorers. In fact, these tools have been dated at somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 years before present, which means that Native Americans were living on the Door Peninsula near the time of and very near the edge of the retreating glaciers that once covered this area.

Cardy was born in Sturgeon Bay and raised on the property now known as the Cardy Paleo-Indian Campsite at 322 W. Spruce Street on Sturgeon Bay’s west side. In 1959, while attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he took a course in prehistoric anthropology and observed that the Clovis stone tools (10,000-12,000 years old) illustrated in the class textbook were very similar to some chipped stone tools that had been found on his family farm. Studies by archeologists from Marquette University and other institutions showed conclusively that the tools in Cardy’s collection were indeed of a similar age to those from Clovis, New Mexico.

Cardy will be at the museum from 10 am to noon on Aug. 18 to answer questions. He will give a presentation later the same day at Crossroads at Big Creek.

The museum is open 10 am – 4:30 pm daily through Oct. 31 and is located at the corner of Michigan and N. Fourth Avenue in Sturgeon Bay. Admission is free but donations are welcome and benefit museum exhibits and programming. For more information call 920.743.5809 or email [email protected].

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