Forest Home Cemetery & Arboretum, Milwaukee

Posted on September 29, 2021 by admin

A touch of fall in southern Wisconsin.

A touch more every day, for sure, but this is how the foliage appeared on Saturday at Forest Home Cemetery & Arboretum, Milwaukee, which is mostly still green.

The cemetery’s chapel was part of Open Doors Milwaukee over the weekend. It is a handsome structure, completed in 1892.

“With an exterior of gracefully aged reddish-brown Lake Superior sandstone, the interior features stately buttresses, fine leaded-glass windows and spacious conservatories containing lush tropical foliage,” the cemetery web site notes, a little heavy on the adjectives. “Many of the tropical plants are decades-old and provide a comforting ambiance that truly sets the Chapel apart from others built before, or since.”

The conservatory elements are on either side of the main nave-like room. I put it that way because, according to a docent on site, no denomination has ever consecrated the space.

As for the cemetery proper, some 118,000 people reside there.

The nonprofit that runs the cemetery publishes a wonderful, 20-page full-color guidebook and was giving them away for Open Doors Milwaukee. Maybe they’re always given away, but anyway I got one and used it liberally during my visit.

“Forest Home Cemetery was established in 1850 by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church as a cemetery for the city,” the guide says. “As Milwaukee expanded, the cemetery became the final resting place for 26 mayors, more than 1,000 Civil War veterans and countless prominent people who left their marks on Milwaukee’s history… the property was one of the first landscaped sites in Milwaukee offering a natural respite. Designed by Increase A. Lapham, known as Wisconsin’s first naturalist, it is considered one of the finest examples of a rural garden cemetery in the Upper Midwest.”

Increase Lapham. Makes me smile. Name your babies Increase, hipsters. You could do a lot worse, considering the distinction of this particular Increase.

“A self-educated engineer and naturalist, Increase Lapham [1811-1875] was Wisconsin’s first scientist and one of its foremost citizens,” the Wisconsin Historical Society notes. “He wrote the first book published in Wisconsin, made the first accurate maps of the state, investigated Wisconsin’s effigy mounds, native trees and grasses, climatic patterns and geology, and helped found many of the schools, colleges and other cultural institutions that still enrich the state today.”

More important than the text, the guidebook includes a detailed map and a color-coded key to the notable burials at Forest Home.

Yellow: Beer Barons; Pink: [Other] Industrialists & Business Magnates; Brown: Pioneers, Inventors & Publishers; Orange: Mayors & Founders; Aqua: Notable Women; Red: Black Leaders & Abolitionists; Purple: Entertainers, Artists & Art Collectors; Deep Blue: Military Heroes; Green: Tragic and Distinctive Burials, such as the memorial to the victims of the 1883 Newhall House Hotel Fire, which General and Mrs. Tom Thumb survived, the grave of John “Babbacombe” Lee, and five victims of the 1903 Iroquois Theatre Fire in Chicago.

All together, the guide lists 65 notable burials. Far too many to see during our hour jaunt through the property, but I managed to find a few, which as always is enough. I was especially interested in finding beer barons. A whole category for beer barons; that’s Milwaukee for you.

Valentin Blatz (1826-94).

Frederick Pabst (1836-1901).

The cenotaph of Joseph Schlitz (1831-75).

If I knew it, I’d forgotten that Schlitz died in the sinking of the SS Schiller off the Isles of Scilly on May 7, 1875. The ship is carved on the cenotaph.

Those three were among the largest memorials in the cemetery, but hardly the only striking ones.

I chanced across the stone memorializing company founder A.O. Smith.

As an industrial concern, A.O. Smith has experienced an interesting trajectory. Over the years, it has made bicycle parts, steel vehicle frames, bomb casings and other munitions for the World Wars, brewery tanks, water heaters, air conditioning components, boilers and more. It’s still headquartered in Milwaukee.

We noticed that the statue on top of the memorial of one Emil Schneider had toppled to the ground at some point recently.

The head and hands are missing. Go figure.

Toward the end of our walk, we noticed George Marshall Clark (1837-61), whose spanking new stone was dedicated only a few weeks ago, on the 160th anniversary of his lynching.

As I said, there was only time to see a small fraction of the notable burials. Among the others listed, I’d heard of a few that we didn’t see, such sausage king Fred Usinger, Gen. Billy Mitchell and insurance executive Edmund Fitzgerald, who lent his name to the ore carrier that famously sunk in Lake Superior in 1975.

Many more stones memorialize interesting people I’d never heard of, including Increase Lapham, see above. The world is full of such. That’s one reason to visit cemeteries, or at least those with useful guidebooks.

A selection, including slightly edited text provided by the guide:

Harrison C. Hobart (1815-1902). Union Gen. Hobart was captured at Chickamauga. Along with two other officers, he devised a plan to dig an escape tunnel, working in secret for months until 109 prisoners crawled to freedom.

Christopher L. Sholes (1819-90). Inventor of the QWERTY keyboard typewriter.

Georgia Green Stebbins (1846-1921). Stebbins was the keeper of the North Point Lighthouse for 33 years. Her father, Daniel Green, initially held the job, but was in ill health, so Stebbins unofficially performed his duties for seven years before being appointed to the position.

Xay Dang Xiong (1943-2018). Xiong was a Hmong veteran from Laos who risked his life in secrecy working with the CIA during the Vietnam War. He spent 16 years in the Royal Lao Army fighting in numerous battles while commanding 4,500 troops… Col. Xiong received a full military burial.

Carl Zeidler (1908-42). Elected mayor of Milwaukee in 1940, Zeidler requested a leave from his duties in 1942 to fight in WWII. He died six months later when his ship, the USS LaSalle, was torpedoed and everyone on board perished. Because his remains were never recovered, he was memorialized with a cenotaph. (His brother Frank Zeidler (1912-2006), three-term socialist mayor of the city, is also in the cemetery.)

An FLW Block, Though Built by Mr. Richards

Posted on September 28, 2021 by admin

Once upon a time, Frank Lloyd Wright took a stab at designing affordable housing. He didn’t get far for various reasons (including, maybe, his temperament), but relics of the effort occupy the north side of the 2700 block of W. Burnham St. in Milwaukee to this day. We arrived to take a look around noon on Saturday.

I bought some postcards from the nonprofit that now owns most of the block. One line on one of the cards says: “Burnham Block is the only location in the world where six Wright-designed homes sit side by side.”

I’d say that’s reaching for a distinction, but in any case the block was worth seeing. FLW is usually worth a look, even in the case of an obscure warehouse building in otherwise obscure Wisconsin town.

The houses on the block have that FLW look, all right.

At one point the owner of the house on the left, which is in the middle of the block, had the temerity to put siding on the house, which horrifies the Wright purists, who have been acquiring the houses one by one in recent years, but haven’t gotten that one yet. When they finally do, it will be restored to its 1910s look, once funds are raised (always a consideration with FLW works).

The six are American System-Built Homes. To quote from the last time we saw one, which was in 2015: “Between 1915 and 1917, Wright designed a series of standardized ‘system-built’ homes, known today as the American System-Built Homes, an early example of prefabricated housing. The ‘system’ involved cutting the lumber and other materials in a mill or factory, and then brought to the site for assembly; thus saving material waste and a substantial fraction of the wages paid to skilled tradesmen.”

Much more detail on the Burnham houses is at web site of the organization that owns most of them.

On Saturday, only one of the houses was open for a tour (the B-1 model, roughly 800 square feet), taking about a dozen people at a time, so we had to wait 20 minutes or so each to get in. While we waited, a docent talked about the houses, and FLW, and the houses’ developer, whom he quarreled with — Arthur Richards, pictured in an early 20th-century ad — the cost-savings measures, the history of the properties after Wright gave up on the American System but before the world acknowledged them as products of The Genius, which was decades later, and more.

This is the B-1, with people waiting on the porch to get in.

The inside is impressive in a number of ways, but mainly in its efficient use of the small space, and its inexpensive wood buffed up to look elegant. Two pictures in the slide show here that illustrate that. Nice place to visit, I thought, but not enough room for essential clutter.

Two Churches in Bay View, Milwaukee

Posted on September 27, 2021 by admin

Just at first glace on Saturday morning, the Bay View neighborhood in Milwaukee seemed alive with small businesses and pedestrians along S. Kinnickinnic Ave. (long ago, an Indian trace). I was glad to see it.

The place has a long history, founded separately from Milwaukee. “Captain Eber Brock Ward of Michigan opened his third rolling mill, the Milwaukee Iron Co., in Bay View in 1868,” the Bay View Historical Society says.

“Within a year the village of Bay View sprung up as a company town around the steel mill. Cottages erected for mill workers became the center of the village. Many of these cottages are still occupied today and are a part of the diverse architecture of the Bay View neighborhood.

“With village incorporation in 1879, its rapid growth and demands for city services were so great that a vote was taken and the village was annexed to the city of Milwaukee in 1887.”

Rising at a bend on Kinnickinnic is St. Lucas Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Originally, Evangelische Lutherische St. Lucas Kirche zu Bay View, since it is yet another Midwestern church founded by German immigrants, with the building completed in 1888.

Built using good old Cream City brick, a local specialty.

“The church commissioned architect Herman P. Schnetzky (1849-1916) to design its new place of worship,” Architecture of Faith says. “Schnetzky was born in the town of Wriezen in the Kingdom of Prussia… He came to Milwaukee as a young man and worked in the office of H.C. Koch and Company from 1874 or a bit earlier, [establishing] his own office in 1887.

“Schnetzky’s design for St. Lucas Lutheran is quite similar to his design for St. Martini Lutheran, built just a year prior to St. Lucas on Cesar Chavez Drive and Orchard Street on the South Side. He went on to design at least five other churches in Milwaukee by 1896, under his own name and in partnership with Eugene Liebert.”

A few blocks northwest of St. Lucas is St. Augustine of Hippo Catholic Church, finished in 1908. More Cream City brick.

It too was developed for a German-speaking congregation, with a design by Brust & Philipp, a very busy firm 100 years ago.

A volunteer told me that the platform extending out from the apse (a term he didn’t use) was added after the Catholic church “changed a bunch of things” in the 1960s (not using the term Vatican II). I guess he was used to talking to people who had no notion of that bit of ecclesiastical history. Anyway, the platform was thought better to facilitate priestly interaction with the congregation, now that they faced each other.

He didn’t know who had made the stained glass windows, except that they were original to the church and not added later. They’re wonderful.

The Stations of the Cross on the wall, on the other hand, were salvaged from another Milwaukee church that closed some years ago, though they look like they belong in their current place.

Emerging from the church, I noticed a couple of men on a porch across the street from St. Augustine.

Just a couple of regular Milwaukee guys getting ready for their Saturday doings?

Doors Open Milwaukee ’21

Posted on September 26, 2021 by admin

Warmish weekend, good for walking around. We did that in Milwaukee yesterday, because the Doors Open Milwaukee event has returned after last year’s cancellation. We drove up in mid-morning and returned not too long after dark, as we did in 2019 and 2018 and 2017. One difference this year was that a few — not all — places required a mask.

Another wrinkle this time is that we took the dog. Leaving her at home alone for more than a few hours is just asking for a mess to clean up upon return. So that meant for most of the places we went, we took turns, as one of us stayed with the dog, either in the car or walking her around.

First we went to the Bay View neighborhood south of downtown, a place that got its start as a 19th-century company town. In our time it seems pretty lively. There we sought out St. Lucas Evangelical Lutheran Church and St. Augustine of Hippo Catholic Church, both late 19th-century/early 20th-century edifices themselves, distinctly built of cream brick.

In the Burnham Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, southwest of downtown, you can find the Burnham Block. In fact, an organization called Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block, which is part of Wisconsin’s Frank Lloyd Wright Trail, very much wants you to come see the six small houses on that block, designed by The Genius.

Who are we to resist the call of FLW? We went there next. So did a fair number of people late that morning, more than at any other place we saw yesterday. This was part of the line to get in.

Taking turns looking at FLW’s work took up a fair amount of time. Afterward we repaired to a park for a drive-through-obtained lunch. Then we went to Forest Home Cemetery. Usually, I can’t persuade Yuriko to visit cemeteries, but the Doors Open feature was its chapel, which she was willing to visit.

Then, to my complete surprise, she wanted to walk the dog through the cemetery as I stopped here and there among its many stones and funerary art. Forest Home is an historic rural cemetery movement cemetery, as fine an example as I’ve seen anywhere.

We had time enough after the cemetery for two more churches in East Town — or maybe the Lower East Side, hard to tell — St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and St. Rita’s Catholic Church.

By the time we’d finished those, it was 5 pm and Doors Open was done for the day. But I didn’t quite want to head home. I wanted to find a place to see the Milwaukee skyline, something I’d never done in all the years I’ve been coming to that city.

It didn’t take long.

That’s the view from Veterans Park on Lake Michigan, and it illustrates one of the advantages of the Milwaukee MSA (pop. 1.57 million) compared with the Chicago MSA (pop. 9.6 million).

The logistics of getting to that view of Milwaukee were exactly this: drive to Veterans Park, park on the road for free, and walk about two minutes. To reach a similar vantage to see the vastly larger Chicago skyline, I shouldn’t have to point out, is much more complicated, and free doesn’t enter into it.

Veterans Park in Milwaukee also has some nice amenities, such as a place called Kites.

At Kites, you can buy kites, as well as snacks. We got some nachos.

People were out flying kites. The wind was up but it wasn’t too cold, so it was a good afternoon for it. If we’d gotten there earlier, we might have as well.

We walked the dog again, this time a little ways along the lake.

It was a good afternoon for that, too.

(Very) Late Summer Debris

Posted on September 16, 2021 by admin

Cool nights, but not that cool, and warm days — at least through the weekend, according to forecasts. It’s that time of the year when summer ebbs away anyway.

As for Fairbanks, I don’t know whether dips below freezing count as the leading edge of winter, or merely a chilly fall. Anyway, summer’s done.

The crickets are still chirping by night hereabouts. But I find that if I leave the window open a crack to fall asleep to them, which I like to do, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night sneezing. Not because of the crickets — I’m pretty sure — but damned lingering ragweed.

That happened more than once last night, despite a decongestant I took at about 2, and despite closing the window after the first time. I woke up tired this morning. I managed to get my morning work done, took a siesta in the early afternoon, and felt better after that, well enough to finish the day’s work. Such are weekdays sometimes.

When visiting Wisconsin recently, we wondered whether the dog would want to go swimming.
She did not, though a walk on the beach was fine.

Spotted at a shopping center parking lot recently.

The charging station appeared sometime recently, not sure when. Eventually, they might be so common that no one will comment on them, but I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet.

The Washington Post reported on September 14: “Automakers are betting tens of billions of dollars on the expanding adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S. But a big hurdle for some consumers is the much longer time it takes to charge an EV than it does to refuel a gasoline-powered car. Buc-ee’s Inc., a Texas-based chain of gas-station convenience stores that’s expanding rapidly in the Southeast, could have the answer.”

The gist of the story (for those who can’t access it) is that Buc-ee’s will make — has made — itself so interesting that people won’t mind spending extra time there to charge their cars. Could be. Or it might be the next step for Buc-ee’s toward world domination.

Skeptical? The article also says: “The chain’s origins and most of its locations are in Texas, but they’ve recently added two locations each in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, with new locations under construction in South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi.”

Allouez Catholic Cemetery

Posted on September 15, 2021 by admin

The village of Allouez, Wisconsin, which counts as a suburb of Green Bay, was named after missionary Claude-Jean Allouez, S.J.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): “Allouez, Claude, one of the most famous of the early Jesuit missionaries and explorers of what is now the western part of the United States, b. in France in 1620; d. in 1689, near the St. John’s River, in the present State of Indiana. Shea calls Allouez, ‘the founder of Catholicity in the West’… Allouez laboured among the Indians for thirty-two years. He was sixty-nine years old when he died, worn out by his heroic labours. He preached the Gospel to twenty different tribes, and is said to have baptized 10,000 neophytes with his own hand.”

Besides the village, the Allouez Catholic Cemetery and Chapel Mausoleum has his name. The missionary isn’t buried there, however, but in Michigan.

I visited on the morning of Labor Day. The cemetery is on a long slope between two major streets in the area, Riverside Dr. and Webster Ave. Nearly two centuries old, it still has a lot of room to grow.

In the developed area, so to speak, the stones are fairly dense.

According to the cemetery web site, there are a number of Green Bay bishops in on the grounds, but I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular.

The cemetery is home to only a handful of individual mausoleums, such as this one.

An intriguing stone. People get around, until they aren’t able to any more.

As always, some stones reflect unalterable sadness. This stone silently speaks of a terrible recent incident: a boy run over by a man in a truck.

He says accident, the DA says homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle.

Green Bay: State & Church

Posted on September 14, 2021 by admin

The town of Green Bay wasn’t our primary destination over Labor Day weekend, but when I stay somewhere, I like to look around if I can. Never know what you’ll see, such as a bit of history of the Green Bay Packers.

Moreover, the sign said there’s a Packers Heritage Trail. A little further investigation reveals information posted by the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay.

“The Packers Heritage Trail consists of 22 commemorative bronze plaques. The trailhead is located at the front entrance of the Neville Public Museum. On the journey, you can see Curly Lambeau’s childhood home, as well as the birthplace of the Packers. Visit the train depot that sent off the team for road games. Stop at City Stadium, where the Packers played home games from 1925 to 1956. You will also see the hotel that Vince Lombardi held his first press conference as Head Coach, and the church where he attended daily mass.”

By golly, that’s quite a trail. The plaque pictured above is on the grounds of the Brown County Courthouse, itself a sight to see.

A Charles E. Bell design. He did other courthouses around the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the Montana and South Dakota state capitols. This courthouse dates from 1910, and with its Beaux Arts-ness, reminded me of the Palacio de Belles Artes in Mexico City.

Also on the courthouse grounds is “The Spirit of the Northwest,” by Sidney Bedore and dedicated in June 1931. Looks good for being out in the Wisconsin elements for 90 years; maybe it’s been restored at some point.
The trio are an unnamed Fox Indian, Jesuit missionary Claude Allouez, who arrived in the area in 1669, and Nicholas Perrot, an explorer who arrived about 1664 and claimed the lands around the bay for the King of France.

One more: an unusually modest memorial to the Civil War veterans of Brown County. Late, too — erected in 1934 by the Woman’s Relief Corps No. 91 of the GAR.

A few blocks away from the courthouse is St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, the cathedral church of the Diocese of Green Bay, completed in 1881.

“The original cost of $35,000 was contributed by the immigrant population of the area, the Bavarian Mission Society in Germany, including a donation from King Ludwig I and friends of Bishop Francis Xavier Krautbauer, the second Bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay,” the cathedral web site says. “The architecture is Romanesque in form and was modeled on the Ludwigkirche in Munich, Germany, where then Msgr. Krautbauer was pastor before immigrating to the United States.

“Bishop Krautbauer is interred under a granite slab in the floor at the Bishop Wycislo entrance. A 40-by-25-foot mural entitled ‘The Crucifixion’ is painted on the rear wall of the sanctuary. It was painted in 1883 by Johann Schmitt, a German immigrant.”

Egg Harbor, Wisconsin

Posted on September 13, 2021 by admin

Here’s a short and incomplete list of businesses you can find on the few streets of Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, in Door County: Be Beauty, Buttercups Coffee, Fat Louie’s Olive Oil Co., The Fireside (restaurant), Greens N Grains Natural Food Market & Cafe, Grumpy’s Ice Cream and Popcorn, Hatch Distilling Co., Plum Bottom Gallery, and Shipwrecked Brew Pub & Restaurant.

Businesses aiming to capture out-of-town dollars, in other words. We dropped a few ourselves. We arrived just after noon on September 5, enjoying clear skies and warm temps, and by mere luck found a parking space on the main street (Wisconsin 42). On a slight rise at that spot, a little set back from the road, is Macready Artisan Bread.

With cast iron tables and chairs, it looked like a good place for an al fresco lunch, which it turned out to be. Good sandwiches: a braunschweiger and an egg salad. As Wiki says, braunschweiger refers to pork liver sausage in North America. At least it did in Egg Harbor that day.

As you’d expect, main street in Egg Harbor sports some handsome buildings and landscaping.

A park adjoining the street leads to the lakeshore.

The shore is mostly given over to a marina.

“The Seafarer” by Jeffrey Olson, 2012. He’s a local artist.

There’s also this, with a sort-of egg on top.

Just what is this kind of multi-directional sign post called, anyway? Who built the first one? How many are there?

Google Image “multi-directional sign post” and you’ll get a lot of images, so maybe that’s it. Seems a little too bland, though. This fellow, who built one, calls it a travel signpost. Also bland, but maybe current in the UK.

There’s whimsy to many (most?) of them, including the one in Egg Harbor. One sign points upward — the (sort of) direction of the International Space Station. Then there’s one pointing to Santa’s House, presumably due north, and a non-directional, still unfulfilled wish that Covid-19 disappear.

That reminded me that I saw a different take on such signs in Fairbanks.

Alaskan destinations up top, but also international ones, which are listed on the post itself on the side not visible in my picture. As if you need more evidence that Fairbanks, unlike Egg Harbor, is a long way from everywhere.

Door County Vistas

Posted on September 9, 2021 by admin

I’ve read that Peninsula State Park in Door County, one of four state parks on the peninsula, is a good one. And as the name says, it’s a peninsula on the peninsula. I have to like that.

“Deeded to the state in 1909, Peninsula is the second-oldest park in the state system, and with no statistical manipulation, the park is numero uno in usage in Wisconsin — with good reason,” Moon Handbooks Wisconsin says. “The peninsula, rising 180 feet above the lake at Eagle Bluff, is a manifestation of the western edge of the Niagara Escarpment, here a steep and variegated series of headlands and reentrants.”

A pretty and popular place, in other words. On the Sunday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, so popular that when we got to one of the entrances, we — and ever other car — were turned away. “The park is full,” a ranger told us. That must have meant the parking lots, but in any case we had to move on.

On to Plan B: a few miles up the coast on Green Bay is Ellison Bluff County Park, hugging a smaller peninsula not far from the town of Ellison Bay. As a mere county park, it has a couple of advantages: no crowds, no fee to get in. But it had the walk and the vista that we were looking for.

First, the walk, an easy path through shady woods on a warm summer day.

The path loops through the property. A separate short boardwalk off the parking lot goes to an overlook, about 100 feet over the water.

A vista straight across Green Bay to the Upper Peninsula on the horizon, about 20 miles distant, with the wind off the water whipping the trees around.

I couldn’t help thinking of the vista from Polychrome Pass in Denali NP only a little more than a month earlier. Different, yet its enormous sweep is compellingly similar, as if a vast valley were flooded to form Green Bay. Which is, of course, exactly what it is. To encounter two such vistas in the same year — well, that makes for a good year.

Not far north of Ellison is Bluff Headlands County Park. For no good reason, I was expected a similar set up, a trail and a short walk to a view. But no: the park includes a longish trail to the view.

Actually, it wasn’t that long. Half a mile, if that. It started easy enough.

The trail followed a heavily forested cliff edge. Soon the trees didn’t just lord over the ground, their roots were everywhere underfoot, with plenty of rocky patches too. The pictures below weren’t along the trail; the trail went through them.

Every step, an opportunity to take an injurious tumble. That was me, thinking more than ever like an old man. The dog didn’t mind the path — she’s near the ground, after all — and so pulled me along, with more energy than you’d expect from an old dog. Still, I believe her pull helped me keep my balance.

Eventually, we got to an opening in the trees, with a view from the cliff. It was about as spectacular as the one from Ellison, just harder to get to.

The fellow sitting at cliffside was reading a book. I didn’t ask what, since I didn’t want to bother him — or risk startling him.

Door County Shores

Posted on September 8, 2021 by admin

In the outskirts of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, county seat and largest town on the Door Peninsula, is a simple sign on state highway 42/57 that says LIGHTHOUSES, with an arrow pointing to a side road. After that, you’re on your own if you want to see those structures, which are on the Sturgeon Bay Canal where it meets the Lake Michigan.

Getting to them involved a couple of wrong turns and passing by the intriguing side road to Leif Everson Observatory, marked by what looks like a model of the planet Neptune, with its Great Dark Spot and some Poseidean moons.

Eventually we found ourselves near the shore — and the lighthouses, but also a pier jutting out into the lake.

Besides the road and a small parking lot, most of the area is divided between private property and a Coast Guard station. Many signs warn you not to trespass on either, which hints at a history of miscreants showing up and making messes.

The Coast Guard station has a light: the Sturgeon Bay Canal Light, vintage 1899.
A little ungainly, but I suppose it gets the job done.

The concrete pier is a bit crumbled in places and its iron-and-plank superstructure is a bit rusty in places. The pier is open to the public. To get there, one treads the “public” half of a narrow footpath. More signs warn you not to step off it.

So if you are a mind to, you can go down the pier. We did.

The pier offers some nice views, including the Coast Guard facility and the private shoreline.

Even better is a view of the other light, Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Pierhead Lighthouse, which is the older of the two, dating from 1881.

The light is on a rock island of its own, connected to the pier by the iron superstructure. In other pictures, the light is bright red, and maybe it still is, in the right light. On Sunday morning, it looked dull red, but even so considerably more handsome than the Coast Guard’s tower.

One more thing: a survey marker way out near the tip of the pier.

Those two lights satisfied the tourist requirement that you visit at least one lighthouse in Door County. So on we went from there, pausing briefly in Sturgeon Bay for gas, and then up the other coastline — the two aren’t very far apart — to the 14-acre Frank E. Murphy County Park on Horseshoe Bay, a small patch of Green Bay.

It’s a pleasant little park, grassland and a beach.

A homely concrete pier juts out into Horseshoe Bay, and we went there too, taking in the wind and the waves.

Frank E. Murphy was a Door County lumberman, cattle breeder and fruit grower in the decades on either side of 1900, according to a sign at the entrance. His family donated the land for the park in 1934.

Another fact on the sign: the man credited with naming Horseshoe Bay in 1842 was Increase Claflin Jr. (1795-1868, pictured). His Find a Grave bio is just a touch hagiographic: “Increase Claflin was a splendid type of a pioneer, a most auspicious forerunner of Door County’s men. He was sturdy, reliable, fearless, intelligent, loyal and self-sacrificing. In the rare quality of his ancestors as well as in his own noble manhood, Door County could ask for no truer type of American virtue.”

The text sounds suspiciously like it was lifted from a 19th-century bio of the man, maybe a newspaper obit, as a reasonable use of the public domain.

Anyway, Increase needs to be brought back as a first name. Perhaps Gen Z parents will take it up.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US: Wisconsin