THIS IS CHRISTMAS...

Con McDonald, Hoyt Purinton and Joel Gunnlaugsson rehang
a tire where a mooring pipe (foreground) gave way earlier
this morning.  

Washington Island, Wisconsin -

The 'Santa's Sleigh' carrying a timely shipment of UPS and FEDEX and U. S. Mail will make its appearance today, after all.

High winds during the night of the 23rd and into Christmas Eve day caused cancellation of the two morning ferries, and with it, passengers and freight anticipated to be ferried to the Island Thursday morning.

That delay in festivities will be resolved soon, when the afternoon ferries bring in the mail and freight packages delivered daily by UPS and FEDEX,  and more importantly, groceries and staples for Mann's Store.

I returned from a run to the grocery store for some salad greens. They were not to be found, because most such items were no longer in stock, purchased by those who plan ahead!   However, Jeff Mann suggested I come back around 3:30, after their grocery truck arrives and their shelves are once again stocked.  The Mann's Store truck is one of a number of vehicles backlogged from the morning's trip cancellations, until wind and seas settle down, allowing for resumed ferry crossing.

Swells from the WSW were strong, created by winds in excess of 40 mph reported during the night. A wicked sea found its way into Detroit Harbor, snapping ferry mooning lines and breaking off three mooring pipes.  The Washington, moored against the south side of the main dock, was the most vulnerable.    By 11:30, when the photo above was taken, most repairs had already been made, and the Washington was moved around to the end, ready for loading for a1:00pm departure.

Travelers waiting for a ferry to the Island were asked to be patient and to wait a bit on the Northport side of the crossing until trips resumed.  According to Janet Hanlin, who answered innumerable calls at the front desk of the Ferry Office, communications with the mainland weren't good, as the power was out for a period of time in certain peninsula locations.  

Joseph Block, rounding the sea buoy east of Pilot Island,
heading south against the lake seas.  The southern tip
of Detroit Island is at right, and view is looking across the
East Channel from the Sand Dunes Park, around noon today.

Earlier, around 10:00am, we watched from home with binoculars the white, breaking seas of the East Channel.  Several miles out in the lake, two vessels inched their way south through lake swells,  toward Porte des Morts and the relatively easier going to be encountered in the Bay of Green Bay.  The conning tower and mast of a tug could be seen, rolling its way toward the passage, seas breaking occasionally along its port side.

By 11:45, the ore carrier Joseph Block, which had been anchored, loaded, in the shelter of Washington Harbor, was observed heading eastbound through the Door toward a down-lake destination.  The Block reported dragging anchor as the wind came around westerly, prompting it to get underway.
   
Toward evening at our home, we're expecting a house full of relatives, young and old, and a few of whom we expect to arrive on one of the afternoon ferries.  Although we have no snow, a disappointment for some, air temperatures are still in the 30s, fine for most folks.  By nightfall, Christmas Eve will be observed once again across the land, as anticipated.

-   Dick Purinton

EARLY CHART OF GREEN BAY

Photo of the Green Bay chart reprint includes (top left) the early
settlement at the mouth of the Fox River with symbols representing
dwellings along the east bank of the river, and
Fort Howard shown on the west bank. 

Washington Island, Wisconsin -

This morning we awoke to rain and overcast, a perfect morning to straighten out my desk and to report on a package we received late last week from Eric Bonow.

Eric seems to have a nose for out-of-the-way documents and maps and in his searching he came across a very early "Chart of Green Bay" that was based on surveys under the direction of CAPT. W. G. Williams, assisted by Lieut. J. W. Gunnison, Corps of Topograhical Engineers, in 1845.  This chart was then "Reduced from the original Map in the Topographical Bureau" by W. B. Franklin, Lieut. Corps Topographical Bureau, in 1846.

The body of water of Green Bay is shown horizontally in order to include as much of the bay from the settlement at the mouth of the Fox River (Green Bay) to the very southern point on Washington Island, including the all-important passage of Porte Des Morts.   It's a shame Rock Island was not included, as it would have shown the first federal lighthouse in the northern Lake Michigan area, Pottawatomie Light, established in 1836.

Rock Island at the time this chart was published quite likely had a more sizable population with people of European origin than any other location north of Green Bay.  Large encampments of natives along peninsula shores of the bay had already disappeared following a treaty between the Menominee Indians and the United States, ceding a huge area which included present day Door County and "all the islands on Green Bay…"  (Rock Island, p.8, published 1969, Conan Bryant Eaton, Washington Island, Wisconsin.)

According to the late Island historian Conan Eaton,  by the time this 1846 chart was published, shipping would have relied on the lighthouse built on Rock Island's northern bluff.   The settlement of Rock Island's fishermen around that time, though small, would continue to grow over the next ten-to-fifteen year period, making Rock Island the setting where Washington Township was then organized in 1850 before the population rapidly declined in the late 1860s and 1870s.

Aside from the Green Bay settlement, long a trading center and a military fortification, no other settlements are shown or named along the entire peninsula.   There is a "Little Sturgeon Bay" and a "Big Sturgeon Bay" to denote shoreline indentations, but no villages named.  For instance, you will find "Eagle Bay" and "Eagle Hard" (the bluff that we know as Eagle Bluff), but as of that date no Ephraim.  

Bay water depths are shown with quite extensive soundings, and navigational features that showing bays, outcroppings and rocky shoals, well-depicted but generally without names.   Exceptions that are shown are:  Hat Island; Chambers Island; Strawberry Islands; Horseshoe Island and "The Sisters."   In Porte Des Morts we see the early name given to today's Plum Island but with the original and correct spelling of "Plumb Island."   This word "Plumb" which can be found on other early charts, denotes this island's location as dead-center, in the middle of the passage, between the peninsula and Washington Island.

The only named feature shown on the 1846 chart on the Lake Michigan shoreline was Baileys Harbor, "discovered" as a harbor of refuge a few years earlier by a Capt. Bailey, who then bought land there for the purpose of logging and quarrying.

The Sturgeon Bay Portage is depicted using a horizontal
scale of "1000 feet to an inch," while the
vertical scale is "20 feet to an inch."   The
highest elevation separating the two waters
was about 20 feet, then, and nearly all sand.

An interesting feature added to the chart was the "Profile of the dividing Ridge at Sturgeon Portage."  We conjecture that by 1846 not many travelers found it necessary or productive to portage across the sandy separation between Lake Michigan and the eastern end of "Big Sturgeon Bay." In earlier centuries, natives and then French voyageurs and pioneers would have carried their canoes or small boats from one waterway to the other.

It would be approximately 35 more years before a canal would be dug and completed to connect the two waterways, providing an economic boost to Sturgeon Bay's prominence in trading and shipbuilding, short-cutting the longer and sometimes treacherous route around the tip of the peninsula. In 1846 the peninsula itself was not yet named "Door Peninsula," but rather, "Wisconsin T.y" for Wisconsin Territory.

The 1846 sailing route around the peninsula and through the Door passage could easily have added a day or more to reach a point but a few miles to the west of Sturgeon Bay, a sailing route that also required avoiding many islands and shoals, none of which were yet marked by federal navigational buoys or markers.

 - Dick Purinton