Protecting Door County’s Crown Jewels

One of Door County’s most important natural treasures is the beautiful chain of islands that grace the waters around our peninsula. These islands add interest and depth to our vistas, their very remoteness sparks romantic notions of serenity, and the stories told about them depict a wilder time and a tougher existence. The Door County Land Trust has taken an active role in preserving these special places.

The dozens of islands that stretch from Green Bay and the northern tip of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula to the southern tip of Michigan’s Garden Peninsula are known as the Grand Traverse Islands.

With names like Hog, Gravel, Pilot, Plum and Detroit, the islands are as unique as their names. A few, such as Chambers and Washington, have a rich and storied human side to them that continues today, while others have become home to only “the birds” as is the case with Pilot Island whose ghost trees support an amazing cormorant rookery.

The islands do have one big thing in common, however. They all were formed in much the same way over hundreds of millions of years and are all part of an island ecosystem that provides critical habitat to an impressive number of rare plant and animal species.

How These Islands Were Formed

It all began 450 million years ago. At this time, Wisconsin was located 10 degrees south of the equator and warm seas covered the area. These seas were home to coral, brachiopods, trilobites, cephalopods and snails. Their calcium rich bodies formed the dolomite bedrock that underlies the Door Peninsula and all of the Grand Traverse Islands.

As the North American plate moved north over millions of years, uplifting occurred, and much of the northern Michigan and central Wisconsin bedrock buckled up and tilted down towards the state of Michigan. This tilting resulted in high cliffs along the western side of the islands and the Door and Garden peninsulas and low wetlands and stretches of sand beach along the east. Preglacial rivers flowed off the uplands scouring out deep river valleys. When the glaciers arrived, they widened these river valleys forming the lakes and deep bays we see today. When the glaciers melted thousands of years ago, Lake Michigan and Green Bay water levels were hundreds of feet higher than they are now with only the highest points of land rising out of the lake. (Some of our favorite landmarks – Brussels Hill, Potowatomi and Peninsula Park bluffs, Mountain Park on Washington Island, the bluffs at Sister Bay, Ellison Bay and Rock Island and the Door Headlands Park were all islands at one time!) As lake levels continued to recede, the landscape we know today came into being and our off-shore islands were created.

The Door County Land Trust is Working to Protect These Natural Treasures

The unique features and biological diversity of Door County’s islands have long been seen as treasures. In fact, in the mid-1970s there was an effort by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to partner with the State of Michigan to establish a bi-state Grand Traverse Islands State Park. Although this grand plan did not come to fruition, the Door County Land Trust has picked up where the states have left off. To complete land projects on several of Door County’s islands, the Land Trust has applied for and received competitive state and federal land acquisition grants reserved for the most ecologically critical coastal regions in Wisconsin and the United States. Over the past seven years, the Land Trust has partnered with the DNR and the Washington Island Project Committee to protect over 500 acres on Washington and Detroit Islands. And our island work is expanding!

Land Trust Begins Protection Work on Chambers Island

The Door County Land Trust is pleased to announce a land preservation success story on a third island. Thanks to help from a small group of concerned landowners and the DNR, the Land Trust has purchased and preserved its first land on Chambers Island.

Chambers Island is the island most easily seen from the villages of Fish Creek and Egg Harbor. Of Door County’s islands, it is second in size only to Washington Island. In 2005, a group of Chambers Island property owners formed the Chambers Island Land Preservation Committee as part of the Chambers Island Association. Suzanne Fletcher chairs the committee and explains that it all began with a hike and a little bit of education.

“A group of us went on a walk led by Mike Grimm, conservation ecologist with The Nature Conservancy,” she said. “We discovered things we had never known about our island – amazing things about Rhinoceros beetles and hemlock groves and other natural features most of us didn’t know existed. It was so inspiring. It reinforced in our minds that what we have here is really a jewel. And, in order to protect what we all love, we needed to act. We asked every property owner on the island to help and we raised enough money to match a State Stewardship Grant. This enabled the Land Trust to acquire and preserve its first property on Chambers.”

Recently designated a State Natural Area, Chambers Island boasts many significant natural features. At the top is the 374-acre Lake Mackaysee. The island’s largest lake is home to an excellent population of largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, northern pike and some bluegill and yellow perch. Lake Sturgeon are still occasionally reported. Lake Mackaysee is also home to nesting bald eagles.

Another important feature of the island is its healthy canopy of second-growth sugar maple, beech, red oak and hemlock. Most significant is the hemlock. In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, hemlocks provide important nesting habitat to neotropical passerine species – i.e. migratory songbirds such as warblers, vireos, thrushes, orioles and tanagers. During spring migrations, these birds move north in a broad band over Green Bay in such large numbers that they will appear on radar images. These birds seek a place to land after a long night’s travel. Chambers Island is strategically located and provides the cover, food and protection from predators that is critical.

Another natural feature found on Chambers Island is the little known muskeg – the only muskeg found on any of the Green Bay or Grand Traverse Islands. Muskegs are large raised bogs formed by accumulated peat deposits and are known to provide important habitat for land snails, moths, butterflies, reptiles, amphibians and birds.

While Chambers Island’s natural history has been millions of years in the making, its human history is comparatively brief. Still, it has been the site of many human ventures. Some of its earliest inhabitants were the Potowatomi. They called the island Nakomah and left behind burial mounds as evidence of their stay. Early European voyagers and missionaries also used the island, mainly as a stop-over on their routes. In 1816, the island was christened “Chambers” in honor of exploratory officer, Captain Talbot Chambers. Chambers Island’s first white settler, a Quaker named Stephen Hoag, didn’t arrive until decades later, sometime before 1849. Soon after his arrival, others followed and, by 1858, settlers petitioned the county to create the Town of Chambers Island.

The years between 1860 and 1890 marked the “hey day” of the island. In their book, Door County Stories, Paul and Fran Burton describe life on Chambers Island during this period:

“Slowly the settlement grew and by the 1860s it had become a thriving village of 250 people with a post office, school, sawmill, and small shipyard. The austerity of the early days eased, and residents had time for tea parties, sewing circles, and dances. In 1868 the U.S. Government recognized the importance of Chambers Island when it constructed a lighthouse.”

The lighthouse, still standing today, was constructed on land purchased from sawmill owner, Lewis Williams. Williams and his wife Ann, Hoag’s daughter, became the first lighthouse keepers and raised eleven children in the living quarters.

As busy as it became, Chambers Island never supported a store; settlers made the water voyage to Green Bay or Milwaukee for their supplies. According to historian H. R. Holand, this was never considered a hardship as folks living in Sturgeon Bay and Menominee had to do the same. By the 1890s, however, rudimentary road construction on the mainland was opening Door County up to a larger world and residents of Chambers Island wanted to be part of it. The population of the village dwindled and eventually disappeared.

Chambers Island was to be the repository of many grand schemes and dreams in the next half century. Leathem Smith, Sturgeon Bay’s most famous shipbuilder, purchased a good part of the island and harvested more than 20 million board feet of white pine. This was used in costructing the original Sturgeon Bay bridge. Smith sold his holdings to Fred Dennett who eventually owned almost the entire island and aspired to create an island paradise. When he died in 1922, his daughter inherited the island and operated a summer girls’ camp there for several years.

The island was soon after sold to a group of Chicago investors, the Chambers Island Company, who planned to develop an exclusive resort featuring an airfield, golf course, yacht harbor, game preserve, clubhouse and network of roads. Several large homes were built during this time, but the advent of the Great Depression marked the end of the Chambers Island Company.

Today, Chambers Island is home to a retreat center for the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, seven miles of town roads, a new marina, the original lighthouse (made electric in 1961), and about 70 private residences. The Holy Name Retreat Center is serviced by the Quo Vadis (“Where are you going?”) ferry, but all other access to the island is by private boat.

Land Trust Successes Continue on Detroit and Washington Islands

Detroit Island has seen three important parcels protected recently. This past winter, Liudas and Dahlia Slenys donated a pristine shore property to the Land Trust and this spring and summer the Land Trust purchased another two key lakeshore parcels with the help of state and federal grants. Together these lands protect over 1,000 feet of shoreline and bring the total lands protected in the Detroit Harbor State Natural Area to over 135 acres. Detroit Harbor hosts northern Lake Michigan’s most productive smallmouth bass nursery and protection of these lakeshore parcels from residential development is critical to maintaining the water quality of this important fishery.

Donald Young and Shirley Weese Young also recently preserved a piece of Washington Island by placing a no development conservation easement on their 42-acre parcel of land on the southeast corner of the island. Their property hosts beautiful wetlands, woodlands and sand dunes adjacent to the Town of Washington’s Sand Dune Park. The Land Trust also purchased 45 acres of land within the Big and Little Marsh State Natural Area on Washington Island’s east side.

“No Island is an Island”

Terrie Cooper, land program director for the Land Trust, explains the importance of protecting Door County’s islands:

“When evaluating the ecological benefits of preserving an island, it’s fair to say that no island is an island. All of our islands are part of a connected ecosystem. When we protect wildlife habitat on one, we are also enhancing the ecological integrity of Green Bay as a whole, mainland Door County, and the other island communities nearby. They are all part of a larger puzzle. We’ve had the good fortune to work closely with island landowners, the DNR, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to preserve this critical habitat for our migrating birds. We are all committed to this effort.”

Islands Showcase Door County’s Biodiversity

More rare plant and animal species exist in Door County than in any other county in Wisconsin. We owe this biodiversity to the interaction between three key players – the alkaline dolomite bedrock, the water, and the moderating affect of Lake Michigan’s cooler summers and warmer winters. This interaction has allowed southern species to survive further north and northern boreal species to survive further south than they otherwise would.

While many Door County’s islands historically contained upland forests of sugar maple, beech, basswood, hemlock, white pine, aspen and birch (Rock Island is the best example of this type of old-growth), some islands (Washington, Summer, and Poverty) had poorer, wetter soil and were dominated by boreal forests of white cedar, balsam fir, and white spruce. Door County hosts the most southern boreal forest communities found in the state. Outside of Door County, these conifer-dominated boreal forests are found along the shores of Lake Superior and northward into Canada.

In addition to the forest communities, our islands are home to unique coastal wetlands. These wetlands were formed thousands of years ago when old Lake Michigan bays were closed off by large sand deposits brought in by strong lake currents. Washington Island’s Little Lake, Coffey Swamp, and Big and Little Marsh and Chambers Island’s Lake Mackaysee are examples of these embayment lakes and wetlands. They provide a home for a host of rare wetland-dependent species such as the federally endangered Hine’s emerald dragonfly, dwarf lake iris, dune’s thistle and over 30 species of birds.