~EITEIIIAE B.EAl>EB.

A Collection ofHistories and Stories

100 Years of Memories ... · Only the Beginning · ~--

Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

Many individuals made the Centennial Reader possible. Their recollection of people and events has become a lasting gift for future generations, a written testimony. Stories within the Centennial Reader are joyful and poignant. funny and tragic. Cast by memory, all are all true - and reveal truths as well. It is our sincere hope that after reading these accounts, you will feel even more affection for Peninsula State Park.

The Centennial Reader was fu nded in part through a generous gift from The Raibrook Foundation. Artist Dave Hackett created a rendering of Peninsula's centennial logo, pictured below. Naomi Bw-bacher and Betty Chomeau volunteered their time to proofread the text. We extend appreciation to all of these contributors.

Please contact Peninsula State Park, PO Box 21 8, Fish Creek, WI 54212 to ask permission to reprint any portion of the Centennial Reader. We welcome your Peninsula stories as well. Thank you.

Kathleen Harris Editor, Primary Researcher

2009 All rights reserved by Peninsula State Park. Map of Peninsula State Park, 1930 A Legacy of Land and People

Niagara Es~arpment (formed 430 million years ago) Colonies of Dwarf Lake Iris (thriving on ancient shorelines) Nicolet Bay Archaeological Site (400 BC) Eagle Bluff Lighthouse (1868) Pioneer Cemetery {burial sites of Increase Claflin -and Asa Thorp) Girls Camp Meenahga (1914-1948) 18-hole Golf Course (established 1921) Site of Wisconsin's First State Game Farm (1928-1933) Memorial Pole Honoring Potawatomi Nation (1927) Burial Site of Potawatomi Chief Kahquados (1931) Civilian Conservation Corp Camp Peninsular (1935-1937) Heritage Ensemble (1970) and American Folklore Theatre (1990) Eight miles of Shoreline Two State Natural Areas 38-acre Horseshoe Island Migratory Bird Stopover ~O!fTE!fTS

1909 ...... 1 100 Years of Camping ...... 2 7 at the Helm ...... 7 Tale of the Lone Pine...... 14 Forget,Me,N ot...... 16 Off to Camp ...... 24 At Last ... It's Come! ...... 26 Art in the Park ...... 27 Kakannissiga ...... 32 Quayintuck & Catonka ...... 33 A Swedish Bachelor Lets Us Pick Berries ...... 34 A Drivi11g Force ...... 39 Ga1ne On! ...... 43 W orking ~o)Men ...... 45 A Cure for Depression ...... 55 Sister Lighthouses ...... 59 We Caught Fish ...... 63 John Roha11 ...... 66 100 Years of Memories ...... 69 Kodanko Farm Girl...... 84 Curtain Call ...... 90

Peninsula State Park, PO Box 21 2, Fish Creek, Wl 542 12 www.peninsulafriends.com Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader I909 What was life like the year Peninsula became a park?

Peninsula About 35 families lived in "the Park." Many spoke Norwegian. + The original forest had been cut-over. + Captain Duclon was keeper at Eagle Bluff Lighthouse. + Dr. Hermann Welcker ran a resort in Fish Creek. + Door County fishermen sold salted herring, the fish in demand, for one to one-and-a-half cents a pound. + Miss Weborg taught at School House No. 3 on Shore Road. +

Wo1kYou likely worked six ten-ham days and earned about $13 a week. + If you lived on a farm, yam chances of owning a car were about one in 34. If you lived in a city, your chances were closer to one in 200. Perhaps you owned the new Model-T. + If you were a teacher, you couldn't get married and keep yom job - unless you were a man. + If you had a clean shave, you passed an exam. + If you cleaned rooms, you might be caJled a sheet-slinger. + You might be the first in your family to spend a Lincoln penny, issued September 2, 1909. +

Arts a11d E11tertai11111ent You read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. + You knew the words to ShiJJe on Harvest Moon. + You may have tried new foods like Kellogg's cornflakes, instant coffee, divinity fudge or shrimp cocktail. + Peanut butter was a delicacy served in fine city tea rooms. You probably never tasted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.+

Hea/tl1 You might get the flu in winter, but called it the grippe. + If you died, chances are your final illness was diagnosed as tuberculosis. + If you had breast cancer. the doctor might treat you with radium and milk. + A doctor might remove a tooth to prevent the onset of arthritis.+ You probably lived to age 47, but if you were not white, you died younger. +

News and Politics William Howard Taft succeeded Theodore Roosevelt as President. + "Fighting Bob" La Follette was Wisconsin's U.S. Senator. +Peary and Henson reach the North Pole. + Thomas Edison had a new invention. the "talkie." + You probably hadn · t seen a flying machine, but read about it in your 1¢ newspaper. + The U.S. Navy constructed a new base at Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Territory.+ -1- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader IOO YEARS OF f!A~FIX&

Norman R. Aulabaugh

History can explain why particular places become famous for certain things. German immigrants brought sausage-making skills to Sheboygan, now famous for its bratwurst. Curly Lambeau bought equipment for his football team with a gift from his employer at a packing house ln Green Bay. Peninsula State Park became known as the Midwest's favorite camping destination. Was this an accident? Hardly! The answer lies in the park's history. The Legislature in Madison, Wisconsin, appointed a State Park Board in 1909 to make recommendations to establish a state park system. The author of the report, John Nolan, stated ~mpose of a (lark_~a.s.JQ "refresh and strengthen and renew tired people .. .'' A letter accompanying Nolan's report, submitted by Charles R. Van Hise, President of the University of Wisconsin, stated that Wisconsin formerly had large uninhabited tracts of land where people camped, seeking respite from cares. However, such places were rapidly becoming private land. Testimonials by Van Hise and Nolan, on behalf of the State Park Board. 'identified camping as a reason to establish a system of state parks. Peninsula State Park was indeed established, in part, to preserve for the public an area to camp, where people could "renew their spirits." This was and still is a major draw. On any summer evening, as many as 2,000 people camp in the park. My father renewed his spirit every night as he sat at his campfire and gazed out over Nicolet Bay. He often remarked, "I ain't mad at nobody! " Years later, I escaped from my pressure-cooker automotive manufactming manager's job by retreating to a campsite at Peninsula. I owe my sanity to these periods of respite. My father would ask me about my first day back on the job after camping at Peninsula. I said, "The first day back at work was a real killer." My father smiled. He knew this all too well. Great visionaries saw that land was set aside to become Peninsula State Park. Another visionary, Albert E. Doolittle, was hired as the first superintendent in 1913. One of his first tasks was establishing campgrounds. Stories about Doolittle delivering groceries to park -2- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader campers indicate how serious he was about making sure they enjoyed their experience and returned. Helen Schreiber Allen, writing in Fish Creek Echoes, remembered that during the firsl few years there were no designated campgrounds. and camping was free. This didn 't last long. The 1921 park visitor's gu ide listed thirty-lwo "l ots ~ or campsites at Eagle Spring. later called Crystal Spdngs, near Ephraim. (Crystal Springs was closed to camping in 1950.) Marge Krubsack, who camped with her husband Ernie at Crystal Springs for many years, told me Crystal Springs campground was closed because people with nearby cottages didn 't want to look at all the tents! There were also twenty lots at Shanty Bay. now called Nicolet Bay. and eleven lots near the Fish Creek entrance at Weborg Point. Any of these lots could be leased for fifty cents a week or five dollars for the season. Before occupying a campsite, you had to make a five-dollar deposit, refunded only if you left the site in good order. An article in the December 27, 1935, Door County Advocate reporced that the Nicolet Bay Campground was to be rearranged to conform with the Miniche system used by the National Park Service in California. This system created a labyrinth of paths encircling natural tent sites, giving campers more room and privacy. Kenneth Greaves, a landscape architect assigned to Peninsu la's Civilian Conservation Corps. proposed the project. It would accommodate 250 tents and cover fifty acres. Al Doolittle had already been developing campgrounds at Peninsula for t\venty-two years and wasn't very interested in national park planners telling him whal to do. So much for the Miniche system! Until the late 1950s, when individual campsites were established and designated with numbered posts and sile pads, campers pitched tents wherever there was an open space. Audrey Koch remembered camping in the park in 1935 at age six. "We made friends quickly because our tent ropes would cross those of others and we would hear them snore at night!" I first camped in lhe park in 1950. My father observed the tents with crossed ropes at Nicolet Bay and quickly headed for Welcker 's Point. The campground was located where the picnic area is today. Many nights we were the only people there. In 1952, we moved to Nicolet Bay because of the sand beach and a new tolerance for sounds of snoring neighbors! Camping fees were twenty-five cents a night The park ranger came through the campground either on foot or driving a little three­ wheel Cushman truck. When you paid your fee, you received a receipt -3- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader that you attached to your camp unit. Firewood was free! When the woodpile started to get low, the green DNR dump truck would appear. Some people camped for only a week or two. But there was an entire community who set up camp on Memorial Day and remained until Labor Day. Fathers would commute to work, leaving for home late Sunday evening and returning again to the park the next Friday night. The people who camped all summer had elaborate outfits. Canvas­ wall tents often had raised wood floors. Some tents were divided into sleeping and kitchen areas. A screen door kept out mosquitoes. Along the shore of Nicolet Bay, between the beach and where the boat ramp is now located, was an area we called "millionaires row" populated with house tra.ilers. Only poor folk slept in tents! Back in the 1930s, Al Doolittle began the tradition of the Saturday night campfire. The fire was built right on the Nicolet Bay beach. Campers gathered at dusk to sing songs and tell stories under the guidance of a campfire master. By the time I began attending these wonderful events in 1952, the place for the fire had been moved to a campfire ring, a circle fifteen feet in diameter, the outline of which can still be seen in the area just west of the playground. We sang many different songs, but a favorite at every gathering was the "Nicolet Bay Song" sung to the tune of "A Shanty in Old Shanty Town."

Ic's an old canvas shanty in old Nicolet Bay, Some round and some slanty, some every which way. When spring rnlls arnund, we can aliuays be found, Planning a trip to the old camping grotmd.

We'll leave all our troiibles and worries behind, We'll hidest away 'neath the moon and the pines. We're old f'iiends when we meet, at that pe1fect retreat, Around the campfire at old Nicolet Bay.

The summers of unlimited camping stays ended in 1957 with the establishment of the three-week rule. This brought an end to the era of "all summer" camping that many families had enjoyed. Under the new rule, people could camp in the park for just three weeks. T hen, they had to vacate the park for a week before beginning another three-week stay. In 2006, the camp stay limit was reduced to two weeks. -4- Penjnsula State Pm* Centennial Reader

Can you believe there was actually a time when getting a campsite at Peninsula wasn't a problem? Without designated campsites, we could always pack another family in somewhere. But by the early 1960s. all campsites were designated with numbered posts. It was still pretty easy to find an open site when you got to the park, but getting your favorite site started to become a problem. In the 1960s you could reserve any even-numbered site in advance, and later any site, even or odd, except for a few that were assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. Reserva­ tions submitted by mail were accepted with postmarks beginning January 2. The site-assigning process would begin on January 10, starling with those reservations postmarked January 2. The mail reservation system was changed to a telephone-based system on April 15, 1999. Today, you can reserve a campsite by phone or via the Internet.

Webor;g Campground, circa 1930.

Some things have changed in a hundred years of camping at Peninsula, but much remains the same. One of my favorite park activities is to ride my bicycle through the campgrounds shortly befo re the evening dinner hour to "check on the state of the campers." As I ride along, I breathe in the sweet smell of people burning cedar in their campfires. I dodge small chi ldren pedaling those yellow plastic tricycles. I ride over so many chalk drawings that my tires tum all the colors of the rainbow. One evening. I stopped to listen to a family observing the beginning of Shabbat. If you are fam iliar with the "Sabbath Prayer" from Fiddler on the Roof. you know what I experienced. The singing was magic! -5- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

Camping is all about families having fun together. Leave behind the television, video games, and other distractions. Do what this park was established for: get away from the world and renew your spirit! Campers cherish their park memories. I often receive e-mail. letters or phone calls from people who have read my book, The Park. and have memories to share. Dan Ost read my book and then gave it to his mother, Lorraine, who at the age of twelve first camped in the park with her parents in 1933. Lorraine now lives just outside Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I talked to her last fall. Lorraine's father, George Busscher, would dig a hole in the ground and line it with canvas to make a crude ice chest to keep their perishable food cool. They carried sections of old screen doors on the top of their car that were fashioned into an eating enclosure to keep out the bugs. An old piece of linoleum made a great floor. A true shanty at old Nicolet Bay! Lorraine recalled Bob Newbury, the park employee who brought wood for the campfires. She told me of sitting on a bench playing cards in the cook building located not much more than a hundred feet west of where the Nicolet Bay Store is today. The building had a large, black. cast iron wood stove. Ladies made bread dough at their campsites and took it to the stove to let it rise and then be baked. Today, Lorraine still recalls the smeH of that bread. Outside this cook building was a hand-operated water pump. The Reverend Goff, who often camped at Nicolet Bay, would stand by this pump and conduct Sunday chmch services. As I talked to Lorraine on the phone, I could feel her excitement as she shared fond memories from seventy-five years ago. There is a wooden bench where Hemlock Trail crosses Middle Road, at the top of the big hill that descends towards Mengelberg Lane. The bench is engraved with this message: Thanks PSP for a Jjfetjme of memo1ies. Everyone who has ever camped in this magical park echoes this sentiment.

Sources: Portions of this essay and its sources appear in The Park by Norm Aulabaugh. flsh Creek Echoes edited by Virginia Kinsey and Edward Schreiber (2000). Door County Advocate (1935). Interviews conducted by Norm Aulabaugh with Marge and Ernie Krubsack (1991), Eve Steuernagel (1992) and Lorraine Stoklosa (2007) .

-6- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

7 AT THE HELM: Peninsula State Park Superintendents, 1913; 2009

Wimam H. Tishler

By 1913. there was considerable interest in newly-established Peninsula State Park. That summer Chief State Forester E.M. Griffith, whose department was in charge of Wisconsin state parks (at the time there were three) , visited Peninsula to discuss plans for its future. Several weeks later. state workers started to establish boundaty lines and begin preliminary work cleai·ing underbrush and laying out roads. Al Doolittle, then a state ranger, supervised them. A native of Elroy, Wisconsin, Doolittle had managed the state fish hatche1y at Trout Lake. In September of that year, at its first meeting, the State Park Board voted that the individual in charge of the work at each park be given the title of "Park Superintendent." Thus Albert E. Doolittle became Peninsula's first superintendent. This position required skills in construction, forestry, conservation practices, public relations, and political acumen - somewhat of a "renaissance ranger." Doolittle had all these qualities and more. He would oversee Peninsula State Park for three decades. Doolittle proved to be a man of remarkable vision and dedication. Strong-willed, feisty, and sometimes controversial, he worked tirelessly to promote the park and secure funds . He also had a keen sensitivity regarding its natural features and breathtaking beauty. Ralf Halverson, who worked under Doolittle 's tutelage, witnessed -7- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

the first superintendent in action, especially during the sometimes contentious encounters with park neighbors. When Peninsula was established, H.R. Holand, like other landowners. could either sell property to the state or negotiate a life lease. Holand's holding included part of beautiful Eagle Bluff. Noc surprisingly, he was not happy about either option. Eventually, Holand moved to a hillside home across from the park. "Holan cl sat up in one of the rooms in his house, writing," recalled (1973) Ralf Halverson, a colleague of A.E. Doolittle. "and he liked to look out the window across the bay. Right across the road was a good-sized maple tree on park property. and it obstructed quite a bit of his view. Several times Holand asked Doolittle to remove the tree. Of course, being of that nature, this was going to be the last thing that Mr. Doolittle was going to do. This went on for a few years and in those days it wasn't like it would be now, where if you did have trouble you called on the due process of law. In those days, the park was the law. One morning Mr. Doolittle was driving down the road and saw that the tree had been cut down. Well, something had to be done. So, he approached [Holand] and told him that. There was no law called in, but it ended up in fisticuffs. This was the way it was settled." Doolittle planned many early features. Since the State Legislatme was less than generous with appropriations - sometimes less than $2,000 per year - work proceeded slowly. "Early days were primitive," wrote Doolittle's son, Jay. in undated correspondence in Peninsula archives. "There was no electricity and roads consisted of two ruts made by horse drawn vehicles. My father took care of the park while riding horseback. The State did not buy an automobile for his use until 1916 when a Model-T Ford truck was bought." Jay Doolittle thought his father was most proud of the network of park roads he built between 1918 and 1930. Other Doolittle projects included scenic lookouts, campgrounds. towers, and initial portions of two golf comses. Meanwhile, park attendance grew. During the 1919 season, which marked the end of Peninsula's first decade, an estimated 20,000 people visited. Around this time. Doolittle established Door County Days, a summer picnic with music and sports events attended by thousands. Peninsula was becoming a premier outdoor playground in the Midwest. Superintendent Doolittle retired in 1943. He helped his son manage a small cottage resort and gas station near the park entrance. From all

-8- Peninsula State Pai* Centennial Reader accounts. Doolittle did not welcome retirement. especially from a place to which he had dedicated his life 's work. In April of 1943, Paul A. Lawrence was appointed superintendent. A man with considerable experience as a park custodian, Lawrence had been in charge of developing Wyalusing, and managing Nelson Dewey and First Capitol state parks. His tenure at Peninsula Park was astonishingly brief, however; he served only three months before returning to former park assignments in southwestern Wisconsin. In November of 1943, Jule Anderson took charge, but he left before Christmas. Anderson had directed the Wisconsin Conservation Corps, which was dismantled with the call-up for WWII. William H. Beckstrom became superintendent in 1944, the same year A.E. Dooli ttle died. Beckstrom was an Ashland, Wisconsin, native - a skilled botanist with a deep love of plants. He first worked at a Chicago nursery and then built landscape sets for the horticultw-al building at the Chicago World 's Fair (1933 to 1934). "A Century of Progress" was the fa ir's theme. In 1935, Beckstrom returned to Wisconsin to take charge of First Capitol State Park at Belmont. Later, he transferred to Devil·s Lake and Copper Falls state parks. When Point Beach State Forest was established in 1938, Beckstrom took charge of its development. Thus. he came to Peninsula with a wealth of knowledge and experience. During Beckstrom's tenure, the huge number of visitors began to place heavy demands on park facilities, particularly campgrounds. Beckstrom Bill Beckstrom. circa 1944. supervised construction of the shelter .E.B. Colleclion that now stands at Weborg Point and Peninsula archives a new golf clubhouse. Blacktop replaced the "tar and stone chips" at the parking lot near headquarters, too. Securing all private holdings within park boundaries was another issue; Beckstrom facilitated the policy of buying out all remaining "islands .. of private land. -9- Peninsula State Pai* Centennial Reader

Beckstrom left Peninsula in 1954 to operate a plant farm at the Red Barn on the north edge of Ephraim. A master woodworker, he restored log buildings and constructed furniture, street signs and other distinctive objects. He became active at The Clearing and served as trustee of The Ridges Sanctuary, both private Door County organizations. Upon his death, Beckstrom' s ashes were scattered at The Ridges. In 1954, Lowell Hansen took the reins. He was a botany major from lhe University of Wisconsin-Madison who had studied landscape architecture. During Hansen's first year, many of the park's estimated 1,000 abandoned apple trees were removed to comply with state statutes regarding deserted orchards. Hansen initiated improvements at the golf course and the campsites. In addition, he facilitated the extension of electric power to popular Nicolet Bay. Hansen attempted to restore the Marshall Cabin, a log building located near Peninsula 's Fish Creek entrance. First occupied by settlers William and Mary Jane Claflin Marshall, and later leased as a summer cottage by St Louis teachers, Hansen believed it had value. He proposed that the Conservation Department retain ownership but lhat lhe State Historical Society manage the building as an historic site. However, water at the cabin's well was too contaminated to drink. The future of the building remained uncertain until it was offered to The Ridges Sanctuary. [n 1968, the affable Hansen left Peninsula to take a position at the Conservation Department's Madison office. Ralf Halverson (1914-1981) succeeded Hansen. Halverson began his career during the Great Depression. His first assignment was at the state game farm in Poyneue. He earned $65 a month. In 1942, Halverson arrived at Peninsula to assist Superintendent Doolittle. He and his bride, Dorothy. lived in renovated chicken house located near the superin­ tendent's residence. "There was a long hall , with four rooms in a row, and two rooms upstairs," recalled Mrs. Halverson years later, "The doors didn't fit well, and when the strong winds came in winter it would ruffle the rugs on the floor. I always asked guests to keep their boots on. We had a big wood -burning stove in the dining room that would get so hot the cand les would bend over on the sideboard. A small burner in the kitchen kept that room livable - barely! But, it was a glorious place to live in when young." The Halversons first sojourn at Peninsula was brief; Ralf soon joined the armed forces. He served as an army captain in WWII. After returning stateside, he worked at several state parks before returning to Peninsula. -10- Peninsula State Pai* Centennial Reader

In 1973. Halverson gave a speech to the Door County Historical Society. Governor Knowles had recently reorganized the Conservation Department as the Department of Natural Resources. "In the past two years," said Halverson, "the DNR has become sort of a dirty household word. Well, my wife's name is Dorothy and my name is Ralf. We write to friends and so forth, and Dorothy has been signing the cards D n R So anyway, after she wrote a letter she looked at that and said, 'That doesn't sound just right. I'm going to change it."' Halverson went on to share favorite letters from state park visitors.

Dear Mr. Halverson: After traveling in Wisconsin and seeing some of the beautiful fo'resrs, we inqiiired of other people living nearby. We were rold that Wisconsin was rapidly losing its ·virgin forests. Isn'r there something the \Visconsin Consewation Department ca.n do to hel[) the forests kee/) their virginity? Dear Mr. Halverson: ! Afrer reading the literature furnished b)' the Department of Natural Resources, we find that we can camp in your park for twenry-one dct)'S if m)' husband and I come up there on July 22 and have our four children.

Dear Mr. Halverson: We have never camped before but our f1·iends told us how much fun it is. Ts it safe for me to sleep with my husband in your cam/)grou.ncls?

When Halverson retired in March, 1974. Gary E. Patzke was designated superintendent. "It was my dream job," Patzke said in 2008. "I had vacationed there as a child. I loved Door County, and still do. Practically growing up at Peninsula, it was where I first became interested in this business." Patzke, a Wisconsin native, earned a bachelor's degree in outdoor recreation from Colorado State University, and then a master's degree in forest science from Utah State University. As visitor numbers increased (since 1976, Peninsula has logged over one million annual visitors), so did wear and tear on aging buildings. It seemed to Patzke that the park staff wore too many hats. For example, all winter the crew worked "cutting dead and diseased trees, stacking the -11- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

logs in piles ten feet high and two to three hundred feet long. Then, they used a bucksaw hooked up to a tractor to cut firewood. Many evenings, rangers sold wood to campers, instead of patrolling the park." To help staff work where needed most, Patzke negotiated the park 's first woodyard contract with an outside vendor. Next, he tackled Weborg Campground. At the time. Weborg offered twenty-seven sites. Patzke reduced the number to twelve and planted pine trees to green up the barren area. Patzke also implemented a staggered system of opening and closing dates fo r Peninsula's four separate campgrounds, which allowed the park crew to more efficiently upgrade other campsites. Patzke expanded trails, too. While reviewing old Peninsula maps , he noted one long-forgotten path, Lone Pine. He located the steps leading up the bluff, across from South Nicolet Campground. Soon, the route was repaired and the trail reopened. Other major projects included developing a more formal system of cross-country ski and snowmobile trails. laying fine limestone chips on all of Sunset Bike Trail, and creating a Vita (exercise) course near Nicolet Bay. Perhaps most noticeable to campers was the removal of garbage cans at each campsite in favor of centrally-located park dumpsters. That angered many raccoons and skunks! Like prior superintendents, Patzke fou nd himself at the helm of a busy park during turbulent times. For this superintendent, the social changes of the 1970s sometimes spilled into the park. "On holiday weekends," Patzke recalled, "twenty to thirty law enforcement officers came to Peninsula. The park was zoned , and arrests for disorderly conduct were common." Reining in rabble-rousers became a necessity in order to restore Peninsula 's reputation as a family park. In 1984, Patzke left to serve in the Peace Corps. He returned to work for the Wisconsin DNR at Bong Recreation Area, and as superintendent at the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. He retired in 1998. In 1984, Tom Blackwood became the seventh superintendent. Blackwood earned a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin­ Madison. His thesis involved a study of user conflicts on the Wolf River. Blackwood began his DNR career as a natmalist at Wyalusing State Park. He then worked seasonal assignments with the National Park Service at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and Effigy Mounds National Monument. Given this background, his focus on site -12- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader preservation and education is not surprising. This park's efforts to manage federally-threatened species like Lake Iris, and to curtail encroachment of invasive species, have become models for the Wisconsin State Park System. Blackwood also hired Peninsula· s first full-time naturalist in 1997 and facilitated transfonnation of the White Cedar Nature Center into a year-round facility. Maintaining and restoring Peninsula's aging roads, and sewer and water systems, remained a primary challenge. Notable accomplishments dming Blackwood' s tenure have included the addition of three "unisex" shower buildings. expansion of Park Headquarters, rebuilding of the amphitheater stage, repaving most roadways, and overseeing nearly a million dollars in improvements to the golf course. He also supervised construction of a modern wastewater treatment facility (1988) able to process wastewater from 468 family campsites - up to 50,000 gallons of sewage each day. By then, Peninsula had become the second largest "community" in Door County during the summer. Blackwood also facilitated modernization of Peninsula 's campsite reservation system. expanded the trail system to accommodate mountain bikes and skate skiers, and established the park's black-powder deer hunt in 1992. Since 1984 he has strengthened relationships with the Peninsula Golf Associates. American Folklore Theatre. and the Door County Historical Society. In 2004, the state acquired title to Eagle Bluff Lighthouse. In 2006 . Blackwood guided the formation of the F1iends of Peninsula State Park. Blackwood exudes a joy that comes from loving his work. "I find it hard to comprehend that in 1909 people had the incredible foresight to buy up all this land. I'm totally sold on natural land and natmal heritage for our.grandchildren." Like Peninsula superintendents before Jilin, his commitment to protecting and enjoying park resources bodes well for the decades yet to come.

Sources: Portions of this essay and its sources appear in Door County's Emerald Treasure by William Tishler. "Ralf Halverson: Talk to the Door County Historical Society" (1973). Interviews and con-espondence conducted by Kathleen Harris with Gary Patzke (2008) and Tom Blackwood (2008) .

-13- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

TALE OF THE LONE FINE

Elenora Weborg, 1913

Here I grew upon the margin Of this rocky height. Here I've fought the fi ercest tempests With my main and might. Always have I been victorious For my feet you see Are imbedded in the rock-bed Firm as they can be. Here I've watched the golden sunsets Fading in the west Watched the beauteous tints reflected On the billow's crest. And I've rested many an eagle On his weary wing. Often called the birds together Just to hear them sing.

Brothers have I had in numbers But they all were slain By a woodman ·s reckless chopping, Me he let remain. Why he spared me, this I know not, Yet I paid him well for the kindness that he showed me. And now I will tell How I saved his home from lightning; Surely you can see By the scars it left upon me Deep imo the tree. Thrice have I been struck by lightning, Yet I heeded not, And I kept on bravely fighting 'Til the final shock. continued

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'Twas a sultry, heated summer Worst I've seen as yet. And I thirsted for the 1..vater That I could not get. So I bared my branches slowly, Laid my bark away. And I now am calmly waiting For the judgment day. Many a ship have I saluted, Many a sailor hailed. Well they know me, tall and stately, Towering o'er this hill; Even now they look with pity See my hoary head, See no green among my branches, Know that I am dead. Know that I must some day crumble, The Lone Pine in this photo Know that I must fall reporLedly stood at Sven ·s Bluff; To my final place of resting the tree was laLer struck by light/ling. O'er this lofty wall. Carrie Anondsen, who lived in che park, took the photo. ft predates 1935, when the CCC built a stone wall at the overlook.

ton.a Ptne -Peni.nsula Sla(c P

-15- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

Thelma Erickson

I grew up on a 160-acre farm on County A. about one-fifth of a mile south of Highway 17 (now Hwy 42), which was the southern edge of Peninsula Park. My grandfather. Ole Olson Maimer, had purchased our land (brush and stump acreage) after Joggers had removed original pines in the 1860s or early 1870s. He· d come from Norway with a sister and a brother when they were twenty-one, nineteen and seventeen respectively. His sister, the eldest of the three, purchased the land just south of Grandfather's. Both lived oul their lives there. This was a time when many settlers were purchasing land and beginning to wrest small farms from the wilderness that later became "the Park." Many were Scandinavians who attended the Bethany Lutheran Church in Ephraim after it opened in 1889. My grandparents, my father and his six siblings who grew up on that farm, and my two brothers and I were also members of Bethany. I remain to this day.

Park Peddler My father Orrin Thomas Maimer had two jobs in Ephraim, at Jim Hanson's store and Fred Larson's meal market. While working for the latter, he drove a lightweight wooden wagon through the Park twice a week, peddling Fred Larson's home-butchered meat. He became very familiar with the Park's roads and people. He told of how a child would wait for him at the edge of the wooded wagon trail to their home with tvventy-five cents in hand to buy stew meat or whatever (depending on their affluence) for the fa mily's next meal. This was in late spring, summer, and early fall only - in winter each family had its own beef, pork, veal, lamb or fowl to butcher. Then the men had time from clearing, harvesting and planting to hunt and fish. Dad had to cut from the carcass and wrap the meat in brown paper. Twenty-five cents bought 2 Y2 pounds of stew meat! The whole box of the meat-delivery wagon was fil led with ice that had been cut, in huge blocks, from the bay in late winter. Heavy canvas laid over the meat and ice. The ice was stored in shaded icehouses, in layers of sawdust, until -16- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader needed. It lasted almost all summer in lhe icehouse, well-insulated by the sawdusc, which washed off easi ly. For a while. from 1920 to 1935. my father and other farmers were able to cut hay in the Park on the recently-vacated. cleared lands after settlers left. I remember going on the hay wagon with my dad and his hired man to get a load of hay from "Hanson's Dale" as Dad called it. One trip in the forenoon and another in the afternoon of long summer days - quite a distance to haul winter food for our many animals {ten to fifteen dairy cows. four horses at one time, as many as 125 sheep). Our shallow soil and rocky land didn 't raise enough hay, and acreage was needed for grain, corn and potatoes. At any rate, my father enjoyed getting to know the settlers and remembered them until his last years. I-l e died at age ninety-one in 1981. He had a sharp memory , as did his cousin, a maiden lady, Emma Hanson, from the adjoining property. Emma was nearly ninety-five when she died, keen-witted until the las t. She died in 1988. Both were especially interested in the history of northern Door County. I cared for them in che last years, hearing many stories of their youth among the people of the Park - and the stories jibed completely. They were both sticklers for perfecti on. sometimes judgmental, but mostly sympathetic to the church members who were bullied to give up their homes for a pittance. None of them could envision the long-term value of a park then. Emma was the youngest of a fam ily of nine children. A toddler brother and a four-year-old sister, who had been born third and fourth of these nine children, died of choler a lnfantum within a few days of each other. They were buried in Blossomburg Cemetery in the early 1880s. There was no mapping then; their tiny pine boxes and wooden markers eventually dete1iorated and their graves were reused. Emma's godmother lived near Blossomburg Cemetery. This sixteen-year-old godmother was also a teacher in a tiny log school in that vicinity - at that age! H. Elmer Olson, a member of Emma · s confmnation class. had grown up on a farm that encompassed the whole Nicolet Bay campground. Old apple trees from Olson's orchard can still be seen in the group camping area. [Ole Larsen farm ed here prior to the Olsons; the site was the Wisconsin state game farm, circa 1930.] When the Par.k was established, the Olson fam ily was evicted. as were others. They moved to Newport. In later years, Emma was a Sunday school teacher at Bethany Lutheran Church in Ephraim and also secretary of the congregation. Before Bethany purchased land for its present cemetery [near Peninsula's - 17- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader north entrance I. a number of people surrounding and within the Park had already been buried there , a result of all the settlers who had made homes between Fish Creek and Ephraim. Helen and Lucille Ohman grew up next door to Bethany's cemetery. Their father 's property abutted the land which is now 1he upper part of the golf course, on Highland Road. In good weather on Sunday afternoons in 1933, hiking was a popular pastime fo r teenagers. No teens had cars. We worked in Ephraim from Memorial Day to Labor Day. In temperate weather we hiked, and in the winter we sl id down Hi ll 17 on homemade bobsleds, toboggans, Flexible Fliers. etc. - when none but the locals knew about that hill. The road out to il wasn · t even kept plowed after the holidays. We 'd walk out from Highway 17 (now 42) pulling our sleds and each other, or a father would drive us out with horse-drawn sleigh and we'd be expected to walk back at dusk. Snow pants were new - all wool only, but what a boon! The crash years of ' 29 were not far behind us; our parents were struggling to catch up on back taxes. No child I knew of had an allowance. We were given seven pennies for the , ·I ' I Sunday school collection and maybe a ~ dime for the church service that followed. Our entertainment was of our own making - the healthy outdoor type. These are some of the reasons the Park roads and lands are etched in my memory.

Sven's Tower As a teenager I recall Sven's Tower plainly. We'd often hike there from the Fish Creek entrance, or Mr. Ohman would drive us to an old park entrance across from The Rock Supper Club; we 'd hike from there to Weborg' s Point, Sven's Tower or any number of chosen sites fo r the day. The Ohman family knew where we

Sven's Tower, 1929. Gcrnger Collection, Peni11s1da Archives.

-18- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader planned to go. Sometimes they met us at the tower or Welcker's Point, whichever we'd designated. My father and his cousin Emma told me that Sven and his spouse had come from a Scandinavian country all alone. They never had any children; in those days children were the settlers' unpaid assistants. With no one to help with chores, errands, and all else, this couple had trouble clearing the land, planting fields, and so on. They lived by themselves on their wind-swept promontory in a tiny house and barn, southeast of the lookout. His wife ailed and died, and Sven lived there alone. Later, a Miss Kuechler lived in Sven's log house. She gave music lessons to some children. She had a car and went to their homes, some in Sister Bay. She was very strict, I'm told, and would rap knuckles with a ruler if scales weren't played as dictated. It was said that she had pine snakes in her attic but had no fear of them. Up until about ten years ago (I'm 86 now), I could see Canterbury bells growing along the roadside to the south of the lookout, attesting to her Jove of growing things. Eventually the snow plows dug them out. Miss Kuechler moved to Sister Bay in her old age, later taken elsewhere by nieces and nephews.

Campers in the Park My dad would sell raw milk to the campers in Crystal Springs campground. They would come for it every other day, bringing their own containers. They kept their containers in wooden boxes in the icy-cold spring water near their campsites .. . There was a shelter house there. Emma and I carried a picnic to it in 1936. Mrs. Albin Ohman did laundry for many of them for years. Her husband had an exceptionally "green thumb" and would sell early vegetables from his large garden. He also sold milk from one or two cows, but needed most of it for his own family of four girls. These campers were "repeaters" from year to year and became friends of many of the folks who lived around the Park's northern perimeter, often hearing from them at Christmas time. Picking wild berries was prevalent for some years, with the Park's permission; many raspberries, both black and red, and some gooseberries, but mainly blackberries. Wild berry canes were plentiful, regaining the land around the abandoned farms and recently logged forest. Many people from Fish Creek and Ephraim picked gallons to make preserves for winter use in Ephraim's small hotels, or to share as gifts, or even sell in the cottage industries that were starting to sprout.

-19- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

For some years it was popular to drive out to Nicolet Bay to watch the Saturday night, home-talent shows that campers would put on. Many were talented teachers of music or teens who had "city lessons" in singing, tap dancing. and playing various small instru­ ments. They had yodeling and stotytelling - the forerunner of what is today the American Folklore Theatre. In those days. it was held where the commissary now stands. There would be a large bonfire and we'd provide people with light­ weight blankets (mosquito protec­ tion), wrap up in them, and sit in rows to watch in awe.

The Ski Jump and lee Rink I remember going to winter ski­ jumping events Sunday afternoons - no tow ropes for the participants. My brother-in-law, Philip Berns, was a teen then and among the yow1gest. One of the eldest was Peninsula camper Bill Klein Philip's older relative from Sister wilh string ofperch and bass Bay, Anton Martinson, who had caught at Nicolet Bay, circa 1940. been a skier in his native Norway. Another exceptionally good jumper was K.O. Jacobson. He lived in Door County for a few years and amazed us all with his ability. People stood all up and down the hiU on both sides to watch the jumpers come down. The first year, the wooden structure was at the edge of the hill. It was deemed too short and fa r too dangerous. So, they extended it across Skyline Road and skiers slid over the road before launching aloft. For several years there was a skating pond southeast of the nature center. [People originally used the nature center as a winter warming house.] One year, a "Sonja Henie " type skater was imported to put on a presentation. We went. As with ski-jumping Sundays, cars lined the road -20- Peninsula State Pali Centennial Reader on both sides for blocks. Somehow we managed to inch our way through the crowd to the edge of the ice. We watched a wonderfully graceful young woman, wearing white skates, perform in a blue velvet outfit trimmed with white fur. Having seen only "clamp on" skates heretofore, it was the aim of many active gals to own "shoe skates" and costumes someday. Somehow, that skating rink never did seem to catch on - too far to haul water to flood it, some said, and then as now, midwinter thaws played havoc - no lighting, short days and no bathrooms, etc. Besides, we had rims of the bay in each community on which to skate.

People I Remember I was particularly entranced with Miss Gatter' s shop on Shore Road. As a child, I helped make rag rugs. She had tiny looms, and wove placemats, carryall bags, and other items to sell in Fish Creek shops. Those small looms were so interesting to me ; also the fiber she worked with - no torn rags of worn-out clothing. As I recall, her house was low and dark, inside and out, under a cluster of large cedars. Miss Gatter was soft-spoken, dressed "differently," and seemed to be a very educated person. She patiently explained her hobby to all who stopped. The Kodankos were well-known to our family, John to my dad - Fred, Margaret and Laura to me. Mr. Kodanko had wonderful truck gardens; in the fall he would sell us produce we didn' t grow in our smaller garden. He sold cabbage, squashes and root crops. He brought them to our farm in his old topless truck. In nice fall weather, Margaret Kodanko and I often chose to walk home from Gibraltar High School. The first year I went to high school was the first year of school bus service. I walked down the long stretch of" A" and waited for the bus on the Park side of the street (corner of A and 42). That was how I learned about a small winding road , almost grown shut by now, that started at the present Highland Road, disappear­ ing northwest into the woods. My dad said that was originally a logging road and had been the means by which many of the settlers traveled to Ephraim, a much shorter route. It began across from the south edge of Blossomburg Cemetery. Folks who came to Bethany Church joined it at various [junctions] early in the morning, arriving in Ephraim in time for the 11 a.m. service. The road wound through second-growth timber. The settlers carried bushel baskets of provisions for their families. A three­ sided, roofed, long building at Bethany provided shelter for the horses. -21- Peninsula State Pai* Centennial Reader

When services finish ed, the settlers shared the noon meal with Ephraim members or their friends along the way, visited a bit. and returned the long trek to tJ1eir vvoodsy homes in what is now Peninsula Park.

Ci11ilian Conservation Co1ps enrollees w01* at Eagle Terrace, circa 1935. Litkea Collection, Peninsula Archives.

Many were the picnics we had after church on Sundays at Eagle Terrace. We'd leave with the trunk of our car packed with food, fo lding chairs, tablecloths (!) and what not, and go directly there after the church service. Often, we met friends by pre-plan and often by chance - old schoolmates and their young families. It was a very popular place to picnic in the 1940s, 50s and early 60s. Most of us used fires (stones ringed on the ground) as a Sunday noon meal in summer meant hot dogs roasted on sticks over an open fire, loaves of bread, hard-boiled eggs, canned beans warmed at the edge of the fire, potato chips or potato salad, then on to s' mores for certain (which we never had otllerwise), lemonade, and maybe even watermelon. We "young marrieds" almost always walked down [the stone steps built by the CCC] to the Terrace [a former quarry site]. During the first years of the Ephraim Fyr Bal, we watched the bonfires across the bay from this spot. If the weather was dry, we walked down rickety steps from the Terrace to the shore. The rickety steps were later removed. If it was clamp, mossy. and slippery, we went along the top of the bluff edge -22- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

almost to Eagle Panorama, returning the way we came. Someone always took a turn and stayed behind to entertain the small children.

The Twelve Apostles, Skyline Road

I Jove to ride through the Park in spring to see the long stretches of forget-me-nots, evidence of homes there three generations ago. Immigrants often brought many varieties of seeds from their homelands. T he forget-me-not seed is as fine as ground pepper. It is mainly a wind­ borne seeder. and possibly a semi-annual. Years ago, many of us took home a small bouquet, dried it, and aftenvard had forget-me-nots blooming in our flower beds, but they would not be contained and moved to other sites, even to neighbors.

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OFF TO ~AMF

In 1916, Superintendent A.E. Doolittle encouraged Alice Orr Clark and Francis Mabley to organize a girls camp at Peninsula. The women chose the Evenson farm site along Shore Road. Girls from St. Louis and other Midwestern cities spent the better part of a summer at Camp Meenahga taking lessons in horseback riding, s\.vimming, tennis and deportment. Camp Meenahga closed in 1948.

Just what White Sox means in baseball, Just what Tiffany means in rings, Just what home-made means in pie crusts, So with Heinz and pickled things, Just what Hershey's means in nut bars, Just what Tungsten means in lamps, Just what Sterling means in silver, Meenahga means in Camps! 1923 Camp Meenabga Song Sven's Tower A burnt orange full moon Behind an inky pine , A starless sky above ....• ·. I A straggly, bold shoreline, Like a small child's writing, " Irregular but clear. Hushed lapping of the waves I can so faintly hear. Lights of Menominee Across the sleeping lake, The plaintive, low, hoarse cries The swooping seagulls make; Cold whispering through my hair, I feel with ecstasy. Faint horizon stretching Out to infinity. Just for this night alone All these belong to me. Mousie Stix, 1926 Pack and Paddle -24- Penh1sula State Park Centennial Reader

Meenahga' s Tour de Force: The Derby A large barn was located on the George Beyer property, where Julie's Park Cafe and Motel is now. Mr. Grassman. from Madison. remodeled a garage that had been used by the CCC for trucks. He changed the garage into a horse stab.le. Each day, Mr. Grassman took the horses to Camp Meenahga. In the evenings, some friends and I took the horses to the park beach to wash them off and comb them down. We rode one horse and led two or three others with a long leash. That was a highlight, and so much fun. Later, the Meenahga horses were stabled at Cornils [intersection of Hvvy 42 and Cty A]. At the end of the season, the Meenahga girls put on a derby - a show demonstrating their skills. ltsie Krause. (2008) .

By the 1940s, Thade "Ted " Cornils was Meenahga's riding master. Born in Germany, Cornils was a master butcher who apprenticed in Denmark. Before immigrating, he served as a groom to Baron von Gunhardt, adjutant to Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II. Cornils' derbies opened with a color guard, followed by a parade led by camp master Mike Orwig playing the bagpipes. Riders "horsed up in snow-white breeches and painfully shiny boots" pranced into the ring on groomed bays and smoky-black, saddle­ bred horses. The girls rode English saddle while demonstrating their proficiency in dressage Herbie Hardt (2008), Pack and Paddle.

Pictured left, possibly Grace Lanier Brewer: circa 1940. Peninsula Archives.

-25- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader AT LAST ... IT'S l!OM:E!

Excerpts from the 1944 Camp Meenahga Yearbook, Pack and Paddle

At Last - Harriet Chambers It's come! At last the thing that every family has prayed for, and it's come! The war in Europe is over for sure, om men are on their way home and now there is rumor that Peace is being established in the Pacific. If this is true, just think what this will be to us all. There wi ll be no uncertainty for our fathers, brothers, husbands or friends, for they will be home within reach ...

V-J Day at Camp - Editors About a week before V-J Day, Colonel James Howard, a brother of former camper Martha Howard, visited camp and during luncheon he told us all about the new discove1y, the atomic bomb. He told us of the great damage it did in Japan and that he felt soon the war would be over. Sunday night, August 12, Nancy Hamel made the long-awaited announcement during Literary. Shouts and screams of joy filled the air, and many girls had a hard time singing the Star Spangled Banner amidst their tears of joy. After saying goodnight to Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Day, everyone was hurried off to bed, though too excited to go right to sleep. The next clay brought news it was a false alarm. Thus, on Monday and Tuesday every camper at one time or another hurried into the lodge to listen to the radio. Five minutes after the dinner bell had rung on Tuesday came the official report that Japan had unconditionally surrendered. Bursting with enthusiasm and happiness, we sang songs during the whole meal, every patriotic song anyone could think of. and just as loud as possible. Possibly Joan Becker circa 1943. Photo pro11ided by Barbara Becker Glass, Camp Meenahga Collection, Peninsula Archives. -26- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader AI\.T IX T:HE :FAil:K

Frances Burton

Best known for its popular campgrounds, towering limestone bluffs, winding scenic roads, and stands of birches and evergreens, Peninsula State Park once had an additional attraction - a colony of accomplished artists. The park was established in 1909. In expressing his support, Governor John Davidson recommended that ... "places be set aside as state parks for the use in common of the people now living, and as a heritage from them to future generations." But the area designated as Peninsula State Park was initially isolated and not well known to the general public. Its first superintendent, A.E. Doolittle, was always on the lookout for ways to raise the new park's profile. and a group of artists summering there struck him as an ideal way to enhance its prestige. Before being purchased by the State of Wisconsin, the Land occupied by the park was home to farmers, coopers. and fishermen. After their land was sold, most moved on, leaving behind their farmhouses and cabins, all of which were slated to be removed. Doolittle was willing to bend the ru les, however, and starting around 1919, he began leasing some of the cabins to artists and other people he believed to be desirable tenants. Under his unofficial plan, leases were granted in one-year increments, with the unspoken understanding that leaseholders could renew but could not turn the houses over to anyone else. The leased buildings were frequently in teITible repair; none had electricity, and only one or two had wells to provide fresh water. Neverthel ess. the leaseholders repaired, improved. and frequently enlarged the houses. and though remaining rustic, some became quite spacious. Most of the homes were clustered along Shore Road. With its spectacular water views and easy access to Fish Creek, it was a desirable location. Although most of the artists stayed only for the summer months, a few became year-round residents. Following are brief biographies of four of the artists who established long-lasting ties with Peninsu la State Park. All are buried in Blossomburg Cemetery.

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Marie Gatter The most fa nciful of the artists' houses was the OwJ' s Nest, home of Marie Gatter. Located just north of Shore Road's intersection with Skyl ine Drive, the sprawling house grew from a small cabin built around an old cooper's chimney into a delightful four­ bedroom cottage with a dining room, enclosed porch, rambling gardens, and a bathhouse across the road. Charming though it was, it had no electricity, water, or indoor plumbing. A talented weaver, Marie taught crafts at the prestigious Latin School of Chicago in the winter and spent her summers in the park, weaving on the floor loom that dominated the living room. She also sold her weavings and taught crafts. An ebullient woman, she had a wide circle of friends of all ages. Children were particularly fond of visiting her and viewing the large collection of owls for which her place was named. She had close to a hundred owl carvings, as well as owl cookie jars, owl rugs, and owl salt and pepper shakers. She even signed her letters with a tiny owl drawing. Marie grew so fond of her time in the park that she managed to stay through two winters, despite sketchy insulation, a saggy roof, and bone­ chilling trips to the outhouse. She maintained her home in the park from the mid-1920s to about 1960, when she left her beloved Owl's Nest and the house was taken down. She died in 1969 at age seventy-six.

Agnes Kuechler Agnes Kuechler was a different sort of artist - a professional musician. Her chosen home site was a nearly inaccessible, dilapidated cabin high on Sven's Bluff. Once home to the area 's namesake, Sven Anderson, the cabin could be reached only by an old road that snaked up the bluff behind the Owl's Nest. Agnes used her Model-T to haul all her supplies, including water, up the steep road. But what the place lacked in convenience, it more than made up for wi th its spectacular west-facing view. Historian H.R. Holand called the view "one of the finest in America." Agnes came from Chicago and was a friend of Marie Gatter. Trained in piano and voice, she somehow managed to haul a grand piano up the bluff and into her cabin where it nearly filled the livi.ng room. Originally a summer resident, moving in dming the 1920s, she eventually made the park her year-round home. In the winter she was very much alone on the windswept bluff-top, but she persevered despite no electricity, bitter co ld, and ice on the road, which prevented her from using her car. -28- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

Agnes gave piano lessons to children in northern Door County, teaching in their homes or in the Zachow house in Fish Creek (on the site now occupied by Northern Door Sports and Cyclery). Recitals took place in her cabin on the bluff. Students remember her as an exacting teacher with very high standards. In 1964, when Agnes was sixty-eight, the park reclaimed her lease and took down her cabin. She moved to Chicago where she died in 1978.

Vida Weborg Vida Weborg's ties to the park were older and deeper than those of other Shore Road residents. She was born in 1864 in what would later become the park, daughter of one of the peninsula's pioneering families. Her father, Peter Weborg, was a skilled craftsman and barrel maker, who built his home on a road beside the bay (which became Shore Road). Unlike many young women of her time, Vida received an education, including art training in Chicago. She taught school in Chicago. Arizona, and California before retiring and returning to her family's homestead in the park. where her sister Ella was living. The sisters had no electricity, no running water, and no car. They walked back and forth to Fish Creek, often receiving rides from other Shore Road residents and even the park superintenden t. Vida is familiar to many as the skilled illustrator of H.R. Holand's Old Peninsula Days. First published in 1921. the book, enlivened by Vida· s pencil drawings, proved very popular and went through many printings. Vida also ilJustrated her sister ]o hanna' s book, In Viking Land, and produced hundreds of drawings of Door -29- Peninsula State Pai* Centennial Reader

County scenes. Occasionally, she painted elaborate oils, one of which is owned by the Miller Art Museum. Vida also played an important role in creating the memorial pole erected on the park's golf course. It was a project dreamed up by H.R. Holand as a way to honor the Potawatomi Indians. Holand envisioned a tall wooden pole decorated with carved bands depicting Potawatomi Ufe and traditions. He asked Vida to take his rough sketches for the bands and render them fu ll size, ready to be carved. He also asked her to choose all the colors. After carving was complete, she sat beside the pole on the golf course, mixing paints and supervising the painter. Vida Weborg died in early January 1952 at age eighty-seven.

Charles Lesaar Charles Girls at JV!emorial Pole, 1926 Lesaar is best known in Door Gauger Collection, Peninsula Archives County as the carver of H.R. Holand 's memoriaJ pole, but he was nationally knovvn as a portrait artist. His work had been exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute and was in many private collections. Born in Belgium, he immigrated to Canada in 1912 at age twenty-eight. A year later, he moved to Chicago. In 1919 he signed a year-to-year lease on a one­ room cabin near Weborg Marsh and moved in for the summer bringing his wife, Meta, and their two children. Despite not owning the cabin, for which he paid $65 per year, he began expanding it until it included three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a screened porch. He built a playhouse for the children, a

-30- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader garage, a chicken coop, and a sh1dio. There was no electricity in the house, but an old well remained on the property. It later became the water source for many people living on Shore Road. Although he had a Chicago studio, Charles did most of his painting in the park. Working primarily in oil, he painted portraits on commission as well as landscapes. He further supplemented his income by giving art lessons. Because the whole family delighted in their life in the park, they arrived in the spring and remained until cold weather drove them out of the un-insulated house. In 1927, Charles' usual summer of painting was inteITupted by H.R. Holand 's urgent request that he carve the memorial pole. Robert Petschneider, a sculptor from Kewaunee, had been hired to carve the pole, but the 40-foot log proved too large to transport to his studio. He agreed to carve the bear which would top the pole, but Holand had to scramble to find a capable carver who was willing to carve the pole itself - in the park. Lesaar, who had no formal training in woodcarving, offered his services free of charge. Using Vida Weborg' s precise drawings, and carving in 3/8" relief, he completed the pole in only three weeks. Holand called it "a real work of art." When Petschneider' s bear was delivered, Lesaar took a look at it and. according to his son, cut the ears back, claiming it didn't look like a bear. The pole was raised and dedicated on August 14, 1927, witnessed by one of the largest crowds ever seen in Door County. Fourteen years after his participation in that landmark event, Charles Lesaar died in Peninsula State Park at the age of fifty-seven.

The End of Art in the Park Little by little the park's resident artists departed. By 1964, when all leased land in the park reverted to the State of Wisconsin, no artists remained. One by one the houses were taken down; however, many Shore Road residents returned to the park-for eternity. Marie Garter, Agnes Kuechler, Vida Weborg, and Charles Lesaar are buried in the park's Blossomburg Cemetery, only a tenth of a mile from Shore Road.

Sources: Portions of this essay and its sources appear in Door County Stories by Paul and Frances Burton. Additional references include Charles Myr Lesaar, Biography of the Artisc, by Ron LeSaar: An Oral History from John Lesaar, son of Charles lesaa1~ recorded by Ron LeSaar: and Door County's Emerald Treasure by William Tishler. -31- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

~A~ANISSIGA

Those that do not listen, will die; do not quarrel or scold one another, we must not hate each other, we must Love ali the world.

These words, attributed to Potawatomi Chief Simon Onanguisse Kahquados (1851-1930), reflect a surprising tolerance, given that he and his people experienced great injustice and bigotry. Born in southern Kewaunee County, he was named Kakanassiga. His father, Nen Gah Sum (Shimmering Light) , died at about thirty years of age. Kahquados. just five. moved from his father's village at White Fish Bay, Door County, to be raised by his grandfather, Quitos (Day Walking). Quitos was leader at Black Earth, the last Potawatomi village in the area. Just a few years later, in 1862, the U.S. government forced over one thousand Potawatomi, Ottawa and Chippewa to leave. Many went to a reservation in Kansas. Others, including Kahquados, remained in northeast Wisconsin, living in small groups. As an adult, Chief Kahqaudos lived for twenty years at Hannahville, Michigan, a Methodist mission. He worked as a timber cruiser. Chief Kahquados is buried at the memorial pole at the Peninsula State Park golf course. He wished to be buried there, near the gravesite of his ancestor, Onanguisse (The Shimmering Light of the Sun). Onanguisse. an Okama of the Thunder clan, was the Potawatomi chief who saved French explorer Robert LaSalle and the crew of the Griffin at Rock Island.

Sources: www.potawatomimuseum.com and Cemeteries ofDoor County by John Kahlert.

-32- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

~-UAYINT-Ut;Y: ~ ~ATONY:A

The spring and summer of the year 1650 found the Potawatomis along Hibbard· s Creek, a short distance north of what is known as the village of Jacksonport. They had left the women and children in their permanent settlement located around the little Jake on Washington Island , where the museum now stands. It was late afternoon in August and the Chief was on the Eagle Bluff shore awaiting the arrival of his old friend. Chief of the Menominee tribe. Soon he beheld a canoe rounding Eagle Island. with two powerful looking braves, the Chief, and his daughter, the dusky-eyed Catonka. In a few minutes the canoe touched shore. The visitors were warmly welcomed and immediately made their way to the Chief's wigwam on the crest of the hill, about where Johnson's Coffee Shop [Maple Grove Road and Hwy 42 today] was located. A great feast was held to honor the Chief and his daughter: smoked sturgeon. duck, wild geese, partiidge, deer and com. Catonka sat at Quayintuck ·s right and many ardent glances passed between them, as they had at first sight fallen madly in love. The Chief was in his late sixties and the fair Catonka was many years younger, and the wife of Osinka. a Menominee brave. For a week the visit lasted and the lovers were together much of the time and were very happy in each other's company. But at last the time of departure arrived, which saddened them beyond words. They wanted to be alone to say goodbye so walked up the path to what looked like a wild rock garden and sat for a few minutes without speaking. Quayintuck took Catonka in his arms, telling her of his great love, but saying they must part. Catonka wept silently as they made their way back to the wigwam. Soon after, goodbyes were said and they never saw each other again. Within the month Quayintuck was slain at Hibbard·s Creek, after the battle had actually been won: the Iroquois were defeated and dispersed, never to return. Years later an old woman was seen around the spot where the lovers bade each other farewell. Forever after. and to this day, a ring of green hepatica may be seen growing right on the very spot.

Adapted from Tales by tlte Little Fireplace by H. R. Barnmd, date unknown.

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A S~EJ>IS:U EACIIELO:R. LETS VS FIC:K EE:R.:R.IES

Thelma Erickson

I recall Carl Anderson (1885-1976). He was a small, slightly stooped man all his life, with a quiet but somewhat whiney voice. Carl was Swedish and had no relatives in the U.S. For years my father cut his hair and also helped him with any laborious or heavy tasks. He lived on a fare of canned beans or half-burned pancakes, so my mother, who baked twenty-one loaves of bread a week. often offered him bread, and he'd come to pick up a loaf. Carl was a great reader and seemed to have had considerable education in Sweden and Denmark. He was extremely independent. even to cantankerous and sarcastic at times. He had arrived in Chicago nearly penniless and somehow managed to acquire work as a maintenance person in a hospital. He worked at coal firing and liquid furnaces, and rarely got fresh air and sun. After a time, he became ill and was diagnosed as being tubercular by a Doctor Peter Clemenson. a Danish physician associated with the hospital. Doctor Clemenson had a large summer home in Ephraim just below the golf links [Crystal Springs Road], to which he sent Carl to be a caretaker and , hopefully, to recover from his TB. Carl did recover and while living there was accepted by some of the local Scandinavians. my father included. Dad often visited Carl on long winter eves. The cottage had a light system of sorts. also a crystal radio set that one listened to via headphones. Sometimes I was taken along. I looked at a stereopticon viewer with scenes of far-away places or listened to the crystal set (mostly static, which I wondered about) while Dad and Carl drank coffee, smoked pipes. and talked about Scandinavian countries. Eventually, electricity came. Later Doctor Clemenson retired and spent much more time with his family in Ephraim. He needed a landscaper and gardener who was stronger (Carl was a very slight person), and not so averse to direction. Somehow, Carl convinced the Park to allow him to live inside its -34- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader boundaries on the edge of a farm [on Middle Road] that had belonged to Svante Ohman. The latter had been among the first to move off his holdings because his house had burned, but the barn was still usable, if in questionable condition. Carl built a one-room house, about 16 x 24 feet. and moved there with the promise that the property would go to the Park at his demise. He had no relatives alive, never man-ied, nor fathered any children. He farmed for a dozen years or so. In severe weather, he kept his few cattle in the Ohman barn, but mostly they ran wild through the brush, responding to his call and being coaxed with feed. An elderly mule (given to him by my Dad, with which to skid logs for stove wood and such) grazed with the few cattle until it died of old age. The cattle were disposed of to the butcher, as Carl had started a greenhouse and discovered he could make the small .income he needed at that vocation. Immigrants of that time had great fear of all snakes and imbued that fear into their children. My father killed any snake he possibly coul.d: garter, grass, pine [fox] or whatever other harmless one he sighted. Carl, surprisingly, was their champion. He was very interested in nature. He'd read much about snakes keeping the rodent population down and knew "no rodents, less diseases." He also had studjed Wisconsin's "nature books" and knew we had no poisonous snakes in Door County, so he would carefully relocate their nests around his old barn when my father was hauling hay or manure for him there, and he 'd scoff at Dad 's baseless fear. Carl became more and more interested in the greenhouse. He enlarged the "glass house" attached to his tiny home and people found their way to his establishment, for annuals mostly, in spring. However, he did raise geraniums, cinerarias, fuchsias, and some potted plants. He also "wi ntered" large potted plants for tourists and wealthy people who had second homes a.long Cottage Row. His heating was again a coal-fired furnace. It was cozy and pleasantly moist in his greenhouse all three cold and cool seasons. He raised and sold bulbs and tubers of iris, dahlias, and the like, which he grew in summer, out-of-doors. He seemed to love his work and solitude. He hated to deal with "the trade" as he did not like most women, except my gentle mother and the doctor's wife, who often provided him with food - and Mrs. Kodanko "who walked in her husband's shadow." He bought fertilizers and necessities for the plants in quite large amounts from seed catalogues, delivered by truck toward the last [years]. earl ier dropped off at Hwy 42. He retrieved the supplies with -35- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader his mule. or a topless truck he had for a while - cut down from a coupe or sedan that a back had been fashioned onto, common in those days.

A Bear ... Barn Cats I remember the game farm that was run in the Nicolet camping area for some years. For country kids who had never gone to a zoo, we loved to be taken there on a Sunday afternoon to walk the sawdust paths past the net wire cages, viewing raccoon, badger, fox, coyote, black bear, and all manner of smaller animals native to Wisconsin. One week, a yearling black bear managed to escape and disappear. Our radios and local paper had warnings of sightings all over the county, but the bear apparently did not leave the Park, ending up on Carl's porch one night.

As Carl lay reacting, he heard snuffling and pawing near his window. The bear had never had to fend for itself, had littl.e fear of humans, and by now was probably quite hungry. Attracted by human scent after a long trek through wilderness, alone, it was looking for handouts. Carl - without a dog, flashlight, firearm or even a yard light - managed to scare it off. Later in the day, he got word to game farm personnel who came to try to track it, as Carl caught glimpses of it for the next several days. Finally. the game farm people set up a sizeable box trap, with bait inside, on Carl·s open porch. Soon, the young bear was a captive.

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Originally, Carl had a couple of barn cats. When several moved into the house with him, he seemed to enjoy it. He talked to them. Most hunted for a living as he had no table scraps and bought only a few small cans of milk a month. They reproduced, of course. My dad, a crude veterinarian like many farmers, offered to neuter them but Carl was adamant against that. Kittens

A Hot Day Once. Carl grew a sizeable patch of strawbenies. but he hated to pick them. He had orders for six crates at the Ephraim hotels (16 quarl boxes per crate). He offered my mother the rest of the berries. My dad took us there early. We had some sandwiches ~)robably peanut butter) and a quarljar of cold green tea. My mother loved to pick berries and picked wild ones for the jam she made fo r winter, or our few shortcakes in summer. Wild berries were so small and such a laborious task. I hated berry picking of any kind ! These large berries were a joy to Mom who picked industriously. Shortly before noon, with my help, she' cl filled the six crates. Now, with about a quarter of the patch still to cover, the rest was to be ours. Unfortunately, it was a ve1y hot day and the patch was in a low, brightly sunny hollow with evergreens around, shutting off any breeze. We had eaten our lunch and drunk our tea in two rest stops between 8 a.m. and 12 noon, but now became extremely thirsty. Carl came with his topless truck to pick up the crates for Ephraim and my mother asked him to bring us some water. He had no well - only rain barrels at the corners of his buildings and an old contaminated well at the Ohman barn site, from which he hauled tanks of water for his plants. We didn 't dare drink either! He usually strained the rainwater and made himself a large pot of coffee but had drunk that; his wood fire was out (with which to brew more coffee) and he had expected to b1ing back a few gallons of water from somewhere in Ephraim. Meanwhile, he had errands and didn't expect to be back for several hours. Of course, he had no phone. All he had were a few brown bottles of beer - warm. He brought us two. Mom was about as "temperance" as one got, as a Fish Creek Seventh Day Adventist, but we were suffering by now! Berries didn 't help. After Carl left she said, "I can 't let you faint. I'm sure God will understand. -37- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

We'll j ust sip sparingly." We did, but it was unpleasant. I ceased picking berries and crawled under the nearest tree in the shade. She picked doggedly on until it was time for my dad to retrieve us, at which time she admitted to being somewhat disoriented, thinking this must be close to "sun stroke" that we heard about so much in those days. My nimble­ fingered dad hurriedly picked the last row of berries. We went home with two full large kettles, but Dad said, "Never again!" Carl let the patch go and the deer were glad to eat plants. berries, and al l. As Carl aged and needed ready cash for taxes and so on, he got brave and sold a couple of lots in his ex-hay field to some folks who queried the vacant land. They built small pre-fab homes t11 ere, between Carl's home ancl the Kodanko farm, but in a few years they were forced to remove them. Whether Carl had to refund money or how the State of Wisconsin dealt with this, I have no idea. Later, he lived in a small nursing home in Ellison Bay. It was run by Grace Fitzgerald Seelig. Carl became very fond of Grace and her family. 1 did go to see him there a time or two and was relieved to see him so clean and content, remembering the harried, little, coal-soot-faced man I used to take bakery to at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter time, and buy plants from after I was married. He recovered enough to go home in warm weather, using a walker, as recounted by Maurice Larson. Maurice had taken over as Carl's best friend after my dad and mother moved out of Door County in 1941. He was my father's fri end. He is buried in Eagle Bluff, circa 1930. Blossomburg Cemetery.

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A I>IlIVING FOil~E Peninsula Golf Course

Betty Chomeau

When you enter Peninsula State Park from Ephraim, you drive through one of the most picturesque golf courses imaginable. Not only is it beautiful - carved out of the woods and surrounded by magnificent Door County views - it also has a fascinating history!

What later became the Peninsula Golf Course actually began in 1913 as two nine-hole courses, one near the Fish Creek park entrance and the other at the present site. Planning and work began slowly since money was tight and water was a problem; after a few years the Fish Creek site was abandoned. It took the Ephraim Men ·s Club to really get things off the ground at the remaining site, part of it an orchard formerly owned by Door County historian H.R. Holand. Finally, in 1921 The Door County Country Club opened for play as a six-hole golf course, functioning with "sand and oil" greens during its first ten years.

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By 1926 Alex Cunningham, the course· s first pro, had laid out three more holes; one was the 65-yard, over-the-bluff. par three that has been the "signature hole" ever since. During the next few years, Cunningham designed and constructed nine more holes. By 1931 an 18-hole golf course measuring 5000 yards was ready lo play. According to sixteen­ year-old youth champion John Brann. the old course was "short, but sporty" and, because of no watering system, "by August, good golfers could drive nearly every hole." It cost 50 cents to play a round or $15 for a season membershi p. About the time Brann was practicing his strokes in the early 1940s. Highway 42 was re-routed straight down the steep hill into Ephraim. (Originally the highway, now Holand Road , curved to the east as it rolled into town. marking the park 's boundary.) So Highway 42 cut through the course. leaving hole #5 "stranded. " For many years golfers cautiously crossed the highway to play. continuing to tee off over passing cars on Holand Road. In the 1960s, when the course was lengthened and redesigned. improvements included moving the detached hole back across the highway, a fo1tuitous move considering the traffic today! Curly Lambeau, founder, player, and coach of the Green Bay Packers (1919-1939), probably enjoyed the improvements over the years. "In 1942," recalled Dorothy Halverson in 2005, "when my husband Ralf worked at Peninsula, Mr. Lambeau golfed there. Three boys who lived nearby caddied at the course. When they saw Mr. Lambeau coming. they would run and hide in the woods. He had so many extra clubs in his bag it was almost impossible to carry!" Bob Sneeberger (1920-2002) , son of Doc Sneeberger, Ephraim's longtime village doctor, may have been one of those boys. To quote John Brann in 2005: "My good friend Bob used to tell about his caddying days at Pen insula when the fee for 18 holes was 65 cents. It seems the boys were unhappy with that amount because we got 75 cents at Maxv;elton Braes; one morning they went on strike asking for 75 cents. The strike went down in flames that very afternoon when pro Ed West flat out refused to even discuss the increase." Charles Clemenson, an Ephraim native . succeeded West as the pro. When Chuck finished college. the job was open again and Jack Notabaart, a schoolteacher from Appleton. took over, serving as course pro from 1941-1954. "My income," wrote Notabaart in 1995 , "came entirely from concessions, golf supplies and lessons. I would pay for any help requi red. All golf tickets were handled by a state employee, Ralf -40- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

Halverson. Golf fees were $1.00 for 18 holes. Many players asked for caddies ... pull carts and motorized carts had not yet made their appearance. Pull carts were first introduced about 1948 and I purchased twenty-five of them for rental. "Concessions in the clubhouse consisted of the sale of pop. beer, candy bars, cigars and cigarettes. I annually obtained a beer license from the state, but in 1949 I was told I could no longer sell beer. A complaint had been made by local authorities, contending that the golf course was considered to be in the confines of Ephraim, which had always been a dry town. Many people were unhappy about that change in policy." Then, as now, the Resorter's Tournament, which began in 1925, was the season·s highlight. Qualifying flights took place on Monday, with match play running Tuesday through Friday. "I had charge of the tournament," wrote Notabaart, "and Spencer Gould was of tremendous help to me. He was always the master of ceremonies when prizes were awarded. Mrs. Gould and her sister Mrs. Chomeau were frequent winners of the women's championship flight and took a keen interest in the course." Today, after 811 years, families from all over the country still plan their summer vacations for the first week in August in order to compete in this challenging, but fun , golf tournament! John Brann took top honors nine times from 1937 to 1959. "My memories," he wrote in 2005, "go back to the early 1930s when my uncles, Frank Blakefield, Jr., and Ted Lundberg, introduced me to the game of golf at Peninsula. The topper to my golf endeavors was that my grandfather, Shore Road in foreground. pump house on left. r hole tee 111 front of f/11 green. Orea 1940.

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Frank Blakefi eld, Sr. , was a good friend of Mr. Doolittle, the first Peninsula Superintendent. He supplied us with free passes for all the golf we wanted to play. That same grandfa ther was my biggest fan when I played in tournaments. He would sit in the old pump house between the first tee and ninth green and watch the players come through." By the end of the 1970s. a fully-automated irrigation system had been Installed to better maintain tees and fairways. Soon after. in 1982, the Peninsula Golf Association (PGA) assumed management of the course. including fu nding the golf pro/manager positions. Gary Patzke, Peninsula Superintendent at the time, welcomed the fo rmation of the PGA. Maintaining the golf course, he felt, had simply become too big a job for park staff. A population explosion of grubs was the fina l straw. "Raccoons." said Patzke, "rolled the turf back at night to feed on the grubs. Skunks were even worse, as they just tore up the turf, leaving nothing to roll back. The fairways were just decimated ; it looked like a war zone. Park workers spent half a morning many days j ust repairing the turf." The PGA welcomed the challenge of course management. This volunteer group of concerned citizens and golfers wanted to make some changes - and they did! Since that time, the PGA has generated over two million dollars for improvements to the course, the driving range, the maintenance facilities and equipment, and the irrigation system. Proceeds also support the clubhouse, which includes a restaurant and pro shop. Throughout its history the PGA has proven itself a dedicated supporter of youth recreation. For example, the organization sponsors two free, week-long golf clinics for youngsters ages nine to fo urteen, as well as offering fin ancial support for Peninsula education programs. The partnership between the State of Wisconsin and the PGA adds up to a well-run, well-maintained, reasonably-priced, popular resort golf course - our own Peninsula State Park Golf Course.

Sources: "Peni nsul a State Park Golf Course Memories," John Brann (2005 and 2001). Dorothy Halverson, Peninsula State Park Cookbook (2005). "1941-1954 Recollections" by Jack Notabaart, Peninsula State Park archives. Interview and correspondence conducted by Kathleen Harris with Gary Patzke (2008).

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GA~E Olf! Original Site of the W isconsin State Game Farm (1928 - 1933)

Ga1ne Farm - W ildlife Management O rigins As early as 1922, Aldo Leopold envisioned "farming for game" as a new thrust in the field of conservation. Later, he had a heavy hand in drafting the legislation that created the Wisconsin Conservation Department in 1927. A year later, a Game Division was added to the new agency with its function to be " .. . propagation and distribution of game birds in Wisconsin." Leopold thought the new state agency needed field workers whom he entitled "gamekeepers." The agency hired 22-year-old Wallace Grange to lead the division; he in turn hired a man named Harry Johnson. Johnson received the state classification of "gamekeeper," the only person who ever received that state job title. Johnson, under Grange's leadership, put together a small crew to build a game farm facility at Peninsula State Parle Originally called the Peninsula State Game Farm, it soon became known as the Fish Creek State Game Farm. It encompassed ninety-five acres of abandoned farm fields and a residence and barn (Ole Larsen 's former homestead) . Johnson's crew constmcted brood houses and shelter pens, and raised and released about 3,000 pheasants in 1929. A former farm field near the southwest comer of Skyline and Highland roads was used as a "rearing field " for the young pheasants. Excerpts from The Gamekeepers - Wisconsin Wild1if'e Conservation Hist01y from WCD to CWDby David L. Gjeston. (2008).

Harry Johnson - Gatnekeeper Most of the "charter" employees at the state game farm in Peninsula were family or close friends. One must remember that the Great Depression hit in 1929 and a "state" job was invaluable. When the transfer of the game farm to Poynette occurred, most of the men there were unemployed. Dad was told he could hire only a certain number of full -time employees. Instead, to give more families a paycheck, he doubled the number allowed, paying half-day wages. For years afterward (Dad died of cancer in 1948), men told my mother, brother, and me that Dad made it possible for them to survive the Depression in their own

-43- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader community. Otherwise, it was leaving home to work in the WPA, or the CCC, in other states. Bill IG rimmer, Superintendent of Wisconsin Game Management] gave my dad a pup - part wolf and part German shepherd. He often would run with the timber wolves which frequented the park in the late 20s to early 30s. For several years Mother was the only human he would allow to touch him. When [the dog] was about fo ur years old, he befriended me and my brother. Memories! I guess my heart will always be in Door County. Correspondence, Carl Johnson (2004 and 2006).

George Ressler My father George worked with my brother-in­ law, Harry Johnson, at the game farm. My father was in charge of the distribution of pheasants. The first eggs were bought from commercial pheasant raisers; we got chickens, to incubate the eggs from local farmers. We raised a lot of chickens [at our farm Harry Johnson, Oscar Nelson and Harold Shine on County F, across with Molly the game farm dog. from Gibraltar School]. It was the Depression. We butchered the chickens and sold them as fryers. I remember scalding the chickens and picking the feathers. We sold them to Camp Meenahga and to the hotels. I also caddied at the golf course and earned 65 cents for 18 holes, 35 cents for the upper nine, and 30 cents for the lower nine. I remember when my Grandpa Lyman Fairchild was bw-ied in Blossomburg Cemetery [1940] . I was nine years old. It was a 24-hour ceremony with pony-horses riding around, and the changing of horses and riders ... Correspondence. Lloyd Ressler (2006) . -44- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

"W10Il ~Ili& (WO) ~Eli of Peninsula State Park

Evan Nelson (circa 1850) Nelson Point honors Eben Nilsen who arrived in Door County in the 1850s from Norway. Nelson came with Peder Wiborg (Peter Weberg). Weberg and about thirty-five other Scandinavian families. Both men were coopers by trade. Nelson also hewed beams for Reverend Iverson· s house. Iverson, a Moravian minister, is considered the founder of Ephraim. Nelson was a member of his congregation. Evan and Ingaborg Nelson lived in a log home in the vicinity of Nelson 's Point. They had six children: Hanna, Julia, Torena, Edvine Alette (Addie) , Nels and John. Besides being a cooper and builder, Evan had a farm and property up by Sven's Bluff. My family has tvvo documents related to their time in the park. The first is a warranty deed dated February 3, 1872, that shows and guarantees legal ownership of twenty-six acres, purchased for $1.50. The second is a release of mortgage by Sven Anderson, elated December 4, 1879, for the same property. Addie, one of the daughters , married Anton Anderson on June 22 , Evan Nelson. photo 1879, at the Ephraim Moravian courtesy of Edgar Anderson. Church. They \.Vere married by Pastor ].]. Groenfeldt. Anton was born in No1way. After coming to America in his early twenties, Anton worked in a lumber mill across the bay in Menominee. They lived in Menominee for a short while. then moved to Carney, Michigan, in March of 1880. He became involved in road building, logging and farming. Adie and Anton -45- Peninsula State Pai* Centennial Reader had seven children, one of which was my father, Clarence. Anton was killed in a logging accident on November 28 , 1898. Edgar Anderson, great-grandson of Evan Nelson (2008) .

Irene Logerquist (1918; 2005) My father, Herman Krause, was a wheat farmer in Montana. He had 320 acres. In the 1920s, grasshoppers destroyed the wheat crops and he had to sell. My parents had five children. I was six-and-a-half years old when we moved back to Door County. The year was 1926. We moved into a house that was near the superintendent's house. I remember we had cows and chickens where the maintenance shop is today. There was a little creek nearby. My father worked in the park. He was a "teamster." He cut the roadsides in the park with a team of horses and a mower. He also made tables and helped at Camp Meenahga ... Herb Woerfel did woodworking at Peninsula. He would hang the "wood curls" in my hair. My mother Marie had me help the Dyer sisters. They were two schoolteachers from St. Louis who lived in a log house on Shore Road. I had to dust. I remember: both the rag and my hands would get splinters from the log walls. Interview conducted by Kathleen Harris (2005).

The Dyer Sisters A log cabin once stood just past Park Headquarters, near the Superintendent's house. Built in 1848 by William and Mary Ann Claflin Marshall, and later leased as a summer cottage by Lilia and Lydia Dyer, it was eventually moved to The Ridges Sanctuary. Dorothy Halverson, wife of Peninsula Superintendent Ralf Halverson, recalled the "proper teas" given by the Dyers where "ladies came wearing white gloves." Dorothy remembered that the elderly sisters would wash their long, gray hair in the bay. for their cabin had no running water. Inten1iew conducted by Kathleen Harris (1998). "This cabin had wide, pegged-board floors and narrow ladder stairs to the attic. The fact that the Dyer sisters never installed indoor plumbing, and drew their water for everything from the well, made this log house unique. I wonder if Miss Lilia's larkspur revives each year in the spring - her poppies, her lilies and Shasta daisies. Unspoiled by modernization, the cabin was a gem - pristine, adorable. " The Thorps 1832-1932, unpublished, Duncan Thorp (1983). -46- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

The Woerfel Family My dad Hubert (1876-1967) worked in the Park and my mother Jennie (1884-1980) had the "Happy Hour Tea Shop." The Woerfel family - Hubert, Jennie and sons Stuart and Dick - moved to the Park about 1922 and lived in two different houses. The first was the Dyer log cabin near the water. The Dyer sisters were from St. Louis. I remember that they were tall and thin, and very elegant. The second house was at the main entrance to the Park, across the road from the park office. We built this house and moved into it in 1932. My mother ran the Happy Hour Tea Shop out of this house. I remember the Camp Meenahga girls coming there. My mother served one of their favorite desserts: devils. A devil was a chocolate cupcake topped with ice cream and chocolate syrup. Today the house is used as the caretaker's residence at the Homestead Suites in Fish Creek. The entrance to the Park was marked by two stone pillars, three-foot square and eight-foot high. On top were boxes with red geraniums. This entrance was from Highway 17, known today as Highway 42. I remem­ ber the Park kept a pet deer named Desdemona in a small, fenced area near the office for several years. When I was old enough, I would deliver boats and ice to the campers at Shanty Bay. The Parkside Station, located near the Park's entrance, stocked these. I remember gas sold for 20 cents per gallon. At that time, people camped on the same beach site all summer. I also caddied at the original 9-hole golf course. I started as a caddy in about 1926 when I was twelve years old. I walked from Fish Creek to the course. There would be about eighty caddies. The first one there would get the flrst job. We got $1.50 for eighteen holes. Some days. if we found some balls and sold them, we would make $5.00. T his included a good tip. I was born on August 10, 1914. I served as a Naval Officer in WWII, and was stationed in the South Pacific. I taught Industrial Arts for forty years and coached golf for thirty-one years. I have been married to Leona Henrichs for seventy years. We were high school sweethearts. She was from Baileys Harbor. She worked as a maid for the Vails [Bjorkltmden] and her mother was their cook. At about age sixteen. I became a chauffeur fo r the Vails, and went to Highland Park. Illinois, to work for them. Richard Woerfe.I (2008). Hubert and Jennie Woerfel are buried in B.lossomburg Cemetery. Hubert served in the Wisconsin Infantry in the Spanish A.merican War.

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I was nineteen or twenty years old when old John Pelletier came from Little Sturgeon to Fish Creek ... Pelletier was looking for someone help him set nets and bring in the catch, so I started fishing with him ... Peninsula State Park was settled very thick with people then, lots of good farmland and close to the water for fishing. All the farmers who lived along there on the lower shore, near Nicolet Bay, would have a pound boat and a pound net. Maybe two families would go together on a boat and net, and in the spring when the hening would come, they'd come so thick you'd get a boat load at a time! Stuart Woerfel (19 I 2 - 1997), interviewed by Lauren MHterman for the Door County Almanak No. 3 (1986).

My Dad, Emil Krause (1889 ~ 1985) I spent a lot of time in Peninsula State Park during my early years of growing up. I have a very vivid memory of the reconstruction of Eagle Tower [circa 1932]. At the time, my father Emil worked in the park. When he was in his nineties, my father still reminisced about building the tower. As you can imagine, it was a major undertaking given the limited equipment and tools they had to use. It took a lot of thinking and ingenuity from most everyone in those days. They used horses and cables to raise the poles. Much of it was put together on the ground, and then winched by using the horses and a lot of man power. The cables were attached to the winch and were wrapped around trees for more leverage. My father told me he had to climb the up1ight poles to put the clamps around them, in order to keep the poles straight and secure. He took great pride in the erection of the tower, which has a panoramic view of the harbor and the picturesque village of Ephraim. He helped erect the Potawatomi Park tower, too. My Uncle Herman Krause also worked in Peninsula Parle His family lived in a home nexl: to Superintendent Al Doolittle's home. The former house has since been torn down. George Harrington is another person I remember. He was head of the Conservation Department. There is a state park named after him now. The Park had two dump trucks. My dad drove one truck and hauled sand for the masons who were constructing stone walls, and also maldng concrete for the tower footings. He hauled the sand from the Nicolet Bay campgrounds. The American Folklore Theatre parking lot is located in that place now. Horses and wagons were also used to get supplies to where they were needed. My father could use the dump truck to haul -48- Peninsula State Par* Centennial Reader

fallen trees to our home to provide our winter heat. and wood for the cook stove. My brothers and sisters and I helped my father after we came home from church. I remember when the Potawatomi Chief Kahquados was buried next to the totem pole, which is located on the Peninsula golf course. I was about five. It was Sunday afternoon of Memorial Day Weekend, 1931. There were lots of cars parked all around the burial area on the golf course. There were no trees there then. The trees have grown up so the stone placed there in his memory is no longer visible from the road. I remember Crystal Springs campground, named after the road. just below the golf course. After my father no longer worked for the Park, he did carpentry work on his own. A woman from Appleton [Esther Peterson Harwood) owned a cottage west of the campground called The Cat and Fiddle. My father built a stable for their two horses. My dad asked me to help and I did. For helping, I earned a new, two-toned Schvvinn bike. I remember it cost twenty-nine dollars. I was very interested in the golf course and, when I was old enough, became a caddy. I caddied for about three years until I got a job at the Thorp Hotel. I also cut grass for people who lived in the park, like the Dyer sisters. I made ice cream for them when they would have parties with their St. Louis friends. I walked from my home on Gibraltar Road to their cottage in the Park. There were no laws saying you couldn't work when you were still young. Itsie Krause (2008).

Door County Advocate August 12, 1921 Friday during the high wind, fire got started north of the Gibraltar high school and swept thru thirty acres in Peninsula State Park covered with second growth balsam, pine and juniper, stripping everything in the path of the fire. The following day another fire started in the State Park. a half-mile east of the fire on the previous day, this also burning over an area of thirty acres, covered with second growth timber. Hundreds of people fought the fire, Superintendent A.E. Doolittle directing the fighters where possible. Big army trucks that were being used in the road work were pressed into service, hauling tanks of water where most needed. The fire in no way endangered Camp Meenahga or the other camps in the park ...

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Door County Advocate July 23, 1926 Dusting with pesticide by airplane at Peninsula State Park resulted in the killing of about 50 worms per square yard in an extreme effort to save hemlock and balsam trees from the little predators, according to entomologists A.A. Granovsky of the University of Wisconsin and S.B. Fracker of the State Department of Agriculture.

Door County Advocate March 11 , 1932 Supt. A.E. Doolittle of Peninsula State Park has received definite information from the conservation department at Madison that there is now available for work in Peninsula park, Door county, $5,000 from the unemployment fu nd for the forestry department created by the recent relief measure. The $5,000 has been allotted for the cleaning of a swath around the area of brush and down timber as left by dead hemlock killed by worms six years ago so that this fire hazard may be eliminated before the summer months . Mr. Doolittle has begun to organize the work which is expected to start Monday of next week on a plan that will employ 90 men who will work ten days and then have their place taken by a like number. This plan will continue until the fund is exhausted. The present $5,000 will give employment to about 200 men in shifts of 90 men.

Sam Erickson My father-in-law Sam Erickson helped build Folda's estate on Horseshoe Island. He also rebuilt Eagle Tower. Some of the men who worked with him came from the Sister Bay area. My husband (born in 1916) was in his early teens. He would often accompany his dad to work in summer. My father-in-law also built homes on Cottage Row in Fish Creek. When U1ey needed sand for masonry on various job sites, Emil Krause would haul it from the depression that now shows across from the Nicolet campgrounds, where the cars now park fo r the AFT shows. That was solid sand, and it was all removed. It was a long haul, my husband remembered, as he rode on the wagon behind draft horses driven by Krause. a very able, hard-working, reliable employee - one trip in the a.m. and one in the p.m .. starting at 7 a.m. and ending at 6 p.m. on summer days! The tower was built mainly on the ground somehow and raised upward by cables with iliese same strong horses and some tractors and many men: winched up by vvrapping cables around adjoining trees. There -50- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader is one stump with a rusty cable still visible (towards Eagle Terrace, from the tower) on the left side of the road. Most of the excellent stonework that is oldest in the Park was done by a Fish Creek man named Joseph Bleck, who had a natural talent for such. I've been told that in the days of all shipping by sailing vessel, lads would be sent from Ephraim to scan the "nautical highway" to see if there was any evidence of sails. If none, they rode their horses to Sven's Bluff and even to Eagle Lighthouse to get first sightings of the expected sails. Most spotters had good spyglasses in those days of no telephones and no cars. As soon as a ship was spotted. the horsemen would ride back swiftly. Ships were knO\vn by their contours and arrangement of sa ils. They were much depended upon and looked forward to, especially when staples in stores ran low, or mai l or passengers waited. By the time vessels had stopped in Fish Creek and at the lighthouse to dispense oiJ and all manner of cargo, Ephraimites had rolled barrels of potatoes, salted fish, and whatever perishables they were exporting onto several long docks. Thelma Erickson (2008).

Bee Keeper at the Park Entrance The road to Peninsula Park passed our front yard [Julie's Park Cafe and Motel today; Otto 's Log Cabins and the Dreamland Motel. circa 1945]. My father. George Beyer (1886-1947), had a bee apiary located on the north side of our barn. Dael bu ilt an observation unit with two glass sides that dropped down when opened - for easy cleaning. It was amazing to watch, and people stopped to see the hard-working worker bees. The bees fill ed the waxed cones with honey and then closed the cones over with more wax. Everyone wanted to see the queen bee - and she was in view. The queen was longer than the workers. The drones, or male bees, were faller. They didn't work. If the queen bee ever left the nest, the worker bees left, too. They would land wherever she did, and that was called a swarm of bees. To deal with a swarm and keep from being stung, Dad put on a mask and gloves. He used a smoker to get the bees under control. The bees dropped down, out of the smoke, into an empty bee hive that he had placed under the swarm. The queen bee had to be in the hive to make it a success. Controlling a swarm of bees was not a fun job. Bee hives were stacked one on top of the other. Bees worked their way up, filling the wax bee cones with honey. Dad removed the cones as -5 1- Penjnsula State Park Centennja/ Reader

they filled up. If cones were still being worked on by the bees, he moved them to the bottom of the hive. He added empty cones to the top. Many Door County fruit growers had my dad bring hives of bees to their orchards for pollination - as far north as Ellison Bay. He brought hives to Sister Bay, Baileys Harbor, Fish Creek and Egg Harbor. The orchard roads were so rough that the bees usually needed a little smoke from the smoker to settle down. They didn 't like rough rides. My dad extracted honey in a room he had fixed up in our barn . The first extractors were turned by hand. Dad carefu lly sliced off the wax covers on the cones with a flat. sharp knife. Then he put the wooden frames surrounding each sheet of cones - four frames at a time - on the extractor. The frames had to be balanced or the extractor would not spin smoothly. Centrifugal force pulled the honey out and into the extractor container. Dad opened a lever on the container. and honey poured into aluminum pails. Pails were sealed and much honey was shi pped to various places. A lot was so ld from our home. There was a great demand for honey, and ours was freshly made with nothing added. Extracting the honey became easier when we bought an electric knife. We could cut real thin slices of wax off the cones: there was not so much gouging. Eventually, we had an electric motor put on our extractor, which was a big time and muscle saver! My father got his first bees from his father, John Beyer of Stu rgeon Bay. My future father-in-law, Emil Krause. got his bees from my dad. Janet Beyer Krause (2008).

The State Tries to Save Money We got a governor by the name of Heil and I think everybody would remember Julius P. Heil (1939-43). We nicknamed him Juli us the Just. Julius employed a research man whose name was Augie Fry. It was Augie Fry's job to investigate the Conservation Department. He came to Peninsula Park and, of course, investigated. He was looking around trees, behind buildings and everything like that. It was wintertime and the crew was out sawing wood . and we had a Sampson tractor. If anybody has experience with starting a Sampson tractor in l:he wintertime. they know what I mean. What we would do is bui ld a fi re under the tractor in order to get the crankcase warmed up, and then we· d start it. Then somebody would pour hot water, just about boil ing, down the radiator while the tractor was running so that the cooling system stayed warm enough -

-52- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader otherwise it would freeze while we were sawing wood. Well, Augie Fry walked up to that tractor, looked at it as we were sawing wood, and pulled a lever. This, of course, ceased operation for just about two hours until we got the Sampson tractor started again. So, this investigation in Peninsula Park cost the Department wages for six or eight men for about two hours! Ralph Halverson, speech to die Door County Historical Society (1973).

The Stahls: Peninsula Carpenters In 1943, Joseph Stahl (1901-1976) moved his family from Ephraim to Fish Creek - across from the entrance to Peninsula State Park's golf course, on Hwy 42just beyond Maple Grove Road. Joseph, born in Germany, was described as rather short and slightly chubby, with curly hair. Joseph worked in the shipyards in Sturgeon Bay, but as WWII neared its end, the shipyard jobs decreased. In 1946 he accepted a job at Peninsula Park as a grounds keeper at the golf course. He worked mostly at night watering the greens and fairways. Since he had a truck and three healthy, strong sons, he thought it a good idea to bring them along to help. The boys drove the 1935 Ford pick-up truck and dragged the hoses from hole to hole while Joseph controlled the water flow. The Stahl boys enjoyed sliding on Hill 17 (sometimes on sleds and sometimes on inner tubes) , bush-whacking through the woods and meadows, biking on roads with their friends, climbing the towers and hills and cliffs, and fishing. There were many perch available and one did not need a fishing license. They would bring home perch by the bucketful. Several farms still operated in the park, for when the state acquired the land, it negotiated with the landowners to allow them to live out their lives there. Of course, the boys wandered around the farms. Joseph was later promoted to chief carpenter of park maintenance. He helped construct the golf clubhouse and other park buildings. The new clubhouse was built with rough-sawed siding. The logs were all cut from trees Jn Peninsula and taken to the park sawmi.11. Later, Joseph's son Ervin worked as a park carpenter and maintenance man. Erv crafted the sign at the Fish Creek entrance to the park from sand-blasted redwood and meticulously routed each letter by hand. Fellow laborers recalled how he often stood while smoking a pipe at the table saw, warmed by the crackling fire of a nearby wood stove. Over the years, the Stahls saw that park improvements kept up with the times. Interview conducted by Merlie Cox with Harvey Stahl (2008). -53- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

Green Bay Press-Gazette August 8, 1976 Patrolling the park - a public relations job Roger Hanson is in public relations. He helps people identify plants. He goes bike-riding everyday. He meets lot of girls. So what's his job? Would it help to know that Hanson also issues citations for speeding? Or that he occasionally evicts people for being unruly? Right. Hanson is a park ranger. He and eight other rang ers keep some of the many thousands of people who visit Peninsula State Park in Door County each year from ruining things for the rest ...

The Graveyard Shift For several decades Peninsula State Park staff worked around the clock in summer. Park Headquarters was open twenty-four hours. Laurie Betthauser and John Collison worked at the park in the early 1980s, Laurie at the front desk and John as a park ranger. "I paid $4 a week to live in a trailer with the other girls, behind the maintenance shop." said Laurie. "Rangers lived in the Boars Nest [a park-mvned log cabin on Hwy 42] and paid just $3 because they had no drinking water. .. These were the days when half the campsites were non-reservable. Nearly every su mmer morning at 10 o'clock, people li ned up at Park Headquarters to t1y to transfer onto a site. "We ca lled it 'The Sermon on the Mount.'" Laurie remembered. "The manager would stand south of the door, on the little rise built up for just that purpose. Two hundred people would be lined up, waiting ... "I was able to work late into the fa ll one year." John recalled. He now works as a DNR Conservation Warden. "I was sti ll living in the Boars Nest. I remember getting a car-killed deer, and trying to cook up some meat on an old GI stove, a small barrel stove that burned wood. Il was late in the season, and everything in the cabin had been shut off. It was so cold that everything froze - even the toothpaste." Laurie and John were often scheduled on the graveyard shift After asking her out a few times. persistence paid off when she finally answered. "I usually don't date peop le I work with, but ... " They went to the "Omnibus" south of Fish Creek. Bands li ke Pat McDonald and the Essentials and Marvin and the Dogs played there. Was it just a sum mer romance or the real deal? They married a few years later. and remai n so to this day - just one of many couples who met while working a summer job at Peninsula State Park. John and Laurie Collison (2008). -54- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

A ~VIlE FOil :I> EI? IlE SS I 0 Jr

The Civilian Conservation Corps was a New Deal program that employed young men, ages eighteen to twenty-five. CCC Camp Peninsular operated from August 10, 1935, to June 30, 1937. Projects included the maintenance shop, the beach bathhouse, and stonework at the Eagle Terrace and Sven's Bluff overlooks. The CCC built the stone retaining wall along Game Farm Hill (Shore Road to the Tower), cleared 200 acres of poison ivy at Nicolet Beach, and planted hundreds of trees.

Door County Advocate August 9, 1935 The first of next month, ninety men will be transferred from CCC Company 2614, Camp Finley, to CCC Company 3648, Camp Peninsular SP10, which is the name of the new CCC Camp now being located in Peninsula State Park not far from Gibraltar High School. When Camp Peninsular recruits to its full strength, which will be very soon , it will have an enrollment of 206 of which 190 are juvenile CCC enrollees and 16 L.E.M. [Local Experienced Men]

Door County Advocate September 27, 1935 It was suggested that Sven's Tower be replaced by a new tower, but the National Park Service is of the opinion that, because of the natural height of the bluff and the good view afforded from the ground, only a stone lookout shelter should be located there. Some excellent work is being done by the CCC men on the trail that Park Superintendent Doolittle has had laid out for some years .. . One of the most beautiful hiking and riding trails in the park is Owl City Trail [part of Sentinel Trail today] that runs north and south, entering the park as a pony path at the main state highway through a fairyland of Norway, Scotch and white pines, planted by Mr. Doolittle twenty years ago and now reaching a height of some thirty feet in places. The trail comes out at Eagle Terrace, passing there the stump of the huge tree from which the totem pole at the golf course was made ...

-55- Peninsula State Pai* Centennial Reader

Boyhood Memories of Camp Peninsular My first memory of Peninsula State Park that made a lasting impression was the establishment of the CCC Camp. It was located on park property across from where the YMCA is now, near the Gibraltar School football fi eld. First of all, big army tents were erected. This was in 1935 and I was ten years old. These men were brought here to work. Times were Lough during the Depression, with little work and very little money to be made. They cut trees and trimmed brush to make roads and trails in the park. Shelters were built and also bridges where the paths and roads crossed water. These men who worked in the CCC Camp wore army clothes. That was all they had. My Unc.Je Bill Pelke had a farm and he raised pigs. He came to the camp to pick up the garbage, which he took to feed his pigs. His son Harry and I used to help him with the job. We would go in the kitchen and they wou ld give us food, sometimes better than we had at home. One time when we came to pick up the garbage, they gave us each a shirt to wear. The shirts were very big but we were proud to wear them. Each weekday night at 9 p.m., Taps was played and all the men had to be in their tents. I lived on Gibraltar Road so I could hear it. Later, barracks were constructed to replace the tents. They were located just north of the tennis courts at Gibraltar School, in the woods. They were not visible from the road. My fath er Emil Krause was hired by the park [as a CCC L.E.M.] to help construct the barracks. My father was a carpenter by trade. He was paid $6.00 per day. In those days it was i1eq good pay. Building a pair of carpenter horses, with many angles, was the criterion for hiring. There are many angles. The horses were judged for strength and durability, by the way they were constructed. This was important because they were put through hard use. ltsie Krause (2008).

Blueberry Muffins and Nickel Dances As young boys, Hank and Buck Eckert visited the CCC barracks. Before the site became Camp Peninsular, it was pasture for Merle Thorp's milk cows. Sometimes their buddies Ozzie and Dutchy Krause, brothers ofltsie, joined them. All lived nearby. One time , Hank brought them in a Model-A Ford , and got yelled at by the Camp Lieutenant for

-56- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

driving too fast. Another time Hank found a perfect arrowhead on the grounds. The camp cook always gave the boys blueberry muffins or cookies. What a treat! It was the Depression, and "extras" at home were scarce. Sometimes, while savoring the homemade offerings, Hank and Buck listened to an enrollee play the jaw harp, a type of mouth organ. Other times, either boy might take a fast shower in the camp bathhouse. for there was no running water at home. On occasion, the "tree army" would scrimmage the Gibraltar football team. "I remember the CCC boys played in their bare feet," recalled Buck Eckert. "I guess the work boots they'd been issued were just too heavy." Every so often, when .,...... ,...... ,....,..------....,-,,...-.....,,.,, enrollees were off duty and could attend dances in Fish Creek or Sturgeon Bay, the Eckert brothers watched the CCC truck ro ll south. Each enrollee had five dollars to spend each month {$25 was sent directly home to families) . After paying a rental fee for a footlocker, and the fee for laundry. there was usually enough left for a nickel beer. Dancing with a local girl cost a nickel as well. Girls kept a penny from each dance, money that helped them buy school books and clothes. Sometimes, Door County girls, in groups of three or four, attended the dances. "The CCC personnel seemed to have come from CCC Cook at Camp Peninsular. decent, low-income homes, Litkea Collection. Peninsula Archives. primarily the Milwaukee area," wrote Thelma Erickson in 2008. She grew up on a farm near Fish Creek. "In groups of four, six, or eight, we young people hiked and -57- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader climbed the towers. We acquired an old set of golf clubs from some­ where and golfed on Sunday afternoons .in summer. The course did not charge after six p.m. We also rode in a small, khaki -colored truck a few times in the early evening, from six to nine p.m., with some of us sitting in the back. The truck had been 'borrowed· from the camp, I" m sme." She remembered hiking to Eagle Tower with a C-man named Joseph R. For a time, they left notes for each other under a stone near the Camp Peninsular entrance sign. Inten1iews and correspondence wiLh Hank and Buck Eckert and Thelma Edckson (2008).

Camp Peninsular, 1936. The camp was located near present-day Gibraltar School. Litkea Collection, Peninsula Archives.

-58- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader SISTEil LIGH:TH:O-USES

Captain Joel Blahnik Caretaker of Chambers Island Lighthouse since 1976

Eagle Bluff Lighthouse circa 1920s.

When thinking about the 1868 sister lighthouses on the Door Peninsula, the song "Sisters," composed by Irving Berlin for the legendary film White Christmas, comes to mind. Rosemary Clooney and her sister Betty brought this song to "light" in 1954, but a relational experience ninety years earlier deserves some attention. Two lighthouses, Eagle Bluff and Chambers Island, were designed as nearly identical twins to provide a nautical routine for maritime safety. Tn other words, both lighthouses sing and dance the same tune for the same function: to guide ships safely through treacherous channels of navigation. Ships plying these waters hugged either light for safe passage, depending on the vessels' size and cargo. Safe passage with sufficient

-59- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader water depth was a vital concern , especially considering the shallow depth of Green Bay. These were - and are - dangerous waters. Only five miles separated the two lighthouses. Could a captain mistake one lighthouse for the other? Not if the captain stayed alert! Though both were built by the same crew. the same year (1868), with the same Milwaukee cream-city brick, the lighthouses were not mirror images of each other. Each sister wore a different bonnet. The bonnet or tower of the Eagle Bluff structure in Peninsula State Park was square while that of the one on Chambers Island was octagonal.

Eagle Bluff Lighthouse Dangerous waters surrounded Adventure. Middle, Jack and Pirate islands (the Strawberry Island Chain) and their adjacent shoals. Rocky reefs fanned out from the islands. Boats that plied the waters close to the western shore of the Door Peninsula were smaller craft, transporting people and supplies to communities like Egg Harbor, Fish Creek, and Sister Bay. Eagle Bluff Lighthouse was positioned as a beacon for safe travel, especially by night, for ships plying the deeper water very close to the main shore. It bespoke of "hugging the shore. " To pass through the small slot between the Strawberry Islands and Chambers Island was not wise. A shelf ran eastward from Chambers Island for one-and-a-half miles. The spit from the southeast tip of Chambers Island jutted southv,rard for two-and-a-half miles, almost "kissing" the shore of Fish Creek. Hence, no room for improvising past this precarious passage.

Chambers Island Lighthouse The Chambers beacon was erected on the northwest tip of the island to guide larger ships which carried bulk cargo from Green Bay or Marinette to various Great Lakes harbors. These ships drew more water and were not as maneuverable as smaller craft. The west side of Chambers Island presented different navigational hazards. A long shoal, reaching from mid-island toward the Menominee, Michigan, shoreline, must be circumvented. The Lighthouse Service placed a smal l, floating light westward at the shoal's tip, providing a pivoting marker near the Chambers Island light. Two hundred yards offshore. from where the island lighthouse stood, was ninety feet of safe, deep water. Ships were to hug that shore and then aim for the next floating marker which was at the end of another reef running northward off the north tip of the island, -60- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader two miles away. Thus, ships passing northward from the southern part of Green Bay had a direct route of passage on their way towards the tip of Door County. The keepers at Chambers Island maintained both fl oating markers. in addition to their lighthouse duties. Sailing eastward from the north end of Chambers Island toward Sister Bay could be equally precarious. Mariners had to first navigate the Horseshoe Reefs (Frying Pan Reefs). then the Sisters Shoals and Sister Islands. Huge boulders the size of small houses laid scattered beneath three to five feet of water. The lighthouse, erected on Chambers Island's west shore, kept ships westward enough to avoid these hazardous shoals. Keepers al Chambers Island routinely lived there year round. even though shipping closed from January through April due to ice in Green Bay. Island residents walked seven miles across the frozen bay to fetch mail and supplies in Fish Creek. Sometimes a team of horses broke through, but the occasional drowning of an island resident was more heartbreaking. Keeper Sam Hanson 's son lost his life this way in 1922. Peter Coughlin, lighthouse keeper at Eagle Bluff. helplessly watched the tragedy unfold, unable to place a telephone call to Fish Creek because a tree Li mb had fallen over the wire. Families no longer live in either lighthouse. though this author has been lucky enough to serve for many years as caretaker at the Lighthouse Town Park on Chambers. Most days are serenely quiet, though one only has to put his ear to the lighthouse walls to hear conversations, incl uding the murmurs of Lewis Williams. This ghost, the island's first lighthouse keeper, has retained a presence for about a decade. Small sailboats and massive iron ore carriers still ply Green Bay waters. Luckily, like any long- lived fa mily, these sister Lighthouses continue to shine harmoniously, but with lights now powered by the sun. Sisters - oh, Sisters!

Memories of Grandpa and Grandma Duclon Joseph Duclon and Augusta Spring were my parents. I was the youngest of five children. My father was chauffeur and caretaker of the Friedman· s Fish Creek estate. The Friedmans owned the Schuster Stores in Milwaukee. My father also played the violin. My grandfather, William Duclon, was keeper at Eagle Bluff Lighthouse (1 883-1918). I remember Grandpa as a tease. Grandma would ask him to get an apple fo r me from the cellar and he would bring up a potato. Grandma would say, "You know better than that. " I -61- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader remember Grandmother's piano. It was one octave short and always closed. You had to wash your hands before you played it. I went to Gibraltar High School. I remember walking on the top railings of Eagle Tower on prom night, 1932. I wore high heels and a yellow organza dress. A Milwaukee band played at the prom. My aunt, Ruth Doolittle, introduced me to my husband Harold Shine at Pelke's Pool Hall. She said. "He 's got a brand new car." I didn'c dance because Harold didn 't dance. Harold worked at the state game farm in Peninsula, beginning at age sixteen. The game farm manager, Harold Johnson, hired him. Later, my husband became the district game manager of five counties in the Green Bay area. Vivian Duclon Shine (2004).

My father Clyde Duclon worked in the park. and my mother taught at Gibraltar High School. My great-grandparents were Eagle Bluff Lighthouse keepers. Captain William Duclon and Julia Davenport Duclon. I remember living for a short time with my grandparents, Joseph and Augusta Duclon, at the Friedman's caretaker house. The Duclons and Shines used to have a Lot of fun there, playing croquet on the side yard and having big family dinners around a large, round , oak table upstairs in Grandma Duclon's kitchen. Grandpa Duclon not only played the violin, but he was a great ta p dancer and would challenge anyone to a "jig" contest! He always won, of course. And he did have a great sense of humor. Grandpa used to read the Sunday funn ies with me; Nancy and Slugo were his favorites. And he loved vanma ice cream. It cost him a penny if we grandkids heard him say "ain't." He would gladly pay us, of course. About Eagle Bluff Lighthouse - the Duclon boys (seven of them, my Grandpa Joe included) had a band and would play at weddings and parties, carting their piano along on the horse-drawn wagon. The piano was taken in and out of the lighthouse through a window. One of the Duclon boys was named Charles and his wife was Edie, my namesake. She would sometimes play the piano for them. She and Uncle Charlie lived across the street from the Fish Creek public beach. Clyde Duclon, my fathe r, passed away on December 2, 2005 ,just shy of his Christmas 101 ~1 birthday. My mother, Eleanor Booth Duclon, passed away at age 98 in 2004. Edie Julia Duclon McMillan (2006).

-62- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

William S. Groenier

During World War II when gasoline rationing was in effect. our family vacations were at locations not too far from our Chicago home. Our ve1y well-used, 1936 automobile also necessitated trips of short length. The area of choice was Door County. Wisconsin.

Peninsula Seate Park, 194 7.

About 1946 Dad bought a Karry-All Kamper pop-up trailer. This was one of the earliest pop-ups. I believe the first one was called a Gilke. The Karry-All opened out to each side and had an all-canvas top, supported by a metal tubular structme. It featured an icebox at the from and storage lockers fore and aft of the wheel wells at floor level. Made of steel, the body was quite heavy and tended to rust, as the factory paint job was far from satisfactory. I can recall a major effort to sand, prime and repaint just about the entire surface. The 1936 Olds had all it could do to pull the camper at something close to highway speed. The car consumed a couple quarts of oil just -63- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader getting to Door County. a mere couple of hundred miles away. Don' t you know that there must have been a blue cloud following us? On the way we normally camped overnight at Terry Andrae State Parle These trips usually featured brief stops at cheese houses near Sheboygan or Manitowoc. The [Peninsula] campground was located on a small cove in Green Bay and was locally called "Shanty Bay." I think this was because quite a few campers set up equipment for the entire summer. including some rather elaborate "semi-permanent" shelters (shanties). One camping unit that I remember was a very big circular tent. nearly large enough for a one-ring circus! Many campsites. being directly on the water, allowed one to pull a boat up on the beach, right at the site. A vacation highlight was stopping at a local cherry cannery to buy large restamant-sized tins of pie filling. (Door County is known as a premier cherry orchard area by virtue of its climate. The narrow strip of land lies beMeen the main body of Lake Michigan and Green Bay.) Also, Dad and Mom very infrequently tried "their hand" at golf. I suppose they had both played as college students. At Peninsula, they did attempt to revive their interest in the game. I was their caddy in August. 1948. Our main occupation at Peninsula was fishing. We went into the town of Ephraim and rented a rowboat from Anderson· s Store. While Mom and my brother shopped for provisions and took the car back to camp. Dad and I rowed all the way back. a long. three-mile row across Eagle Harbor to Nicolet Bay, taking a couple of hours. I remember one trip {my brother was with us, too. I think) where we got caught in a storm and had a rather hairy time of it. In later years. we acquired a Sears (J.C. Higgins brand) outboard motor. It was a single-cylinder job putting out 3.5 hp and started with a simple rope - no automatic rewind starters or electric devices like later engines. I say it started with a rope - most of the time it took MANY applications of said rope to get even a sputter. I remember many times when Dad disassembled the carburetor, attempting to get that foo l motor in a more operable condition. With the Sears motor. we thought that boating from Ephraim would be a snap. In reality, the wooden tub we rented was so heavy that the motor barely pushed it along. In a headwind, any progress at all was very slow. This boat, we decided, was constructed of old lumber and was well waterlogged at that! Would you believe its name was Spee-Dee? -64- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

As for the fishing, the area was known for its jumbo-sized perch. The little bay at Horseshoe Island was a favorite fish ing spot. For bait, we purchased night crawlers and minnows from Anderson· s Store. Some­ times. rather than buy minnows, we went across the peninsula to an undeveloped area named Kangaroo Lake and used a net to se ine native minnows. I'm sure this would be illegal today. After rowing or motoring to a potential .. hot spot," we simply baited our hooks and dro pped the lines to the bottom. No trolling, casting or fancy stuff. And we caught fish!

Billy iuich fish, August, 194 7. Horseshoe Island in backgro und.

-65- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader ;JO:Ulf IlO:UAX Adventure Island Boy Evcerpts from a SCOIJ' written by Skipper Kinney, circa 1950s

Jusl off the park's shore are the Strawbeny l5lands, the largest of which is Adventure Island. From 1925 to 1960. Charles Kinney. a shop teacher k om Whmctka. !JJinois, directed a boys camp there. Kinney especially admired several birch trees that he had transplanted near Adventure Island ·s harbor- eventually naming them in honor ofa yow1g camper ...

Until last summer, the thought of nam ing them for a person never occurred to me. Today they are named for an Adventure Island boy. John Rohan first came to Adventme Island five years ago last summer, a few days before his eighth birthday. He was literally bursting at the seams of his Roy Rogers outfit - with questions. Apparently he had read and re­ read every scrap of printed matter I had sent him about the island. When he asked if there rea lly was a headless woman prowling about the woods on moonless night:s, I was hard put to answer. I knew he wanted me to say yes, yet I also knew that such an answer was hardly advisable for an imaginative, high-strung boy of eight. He had that priceless gift of transforming the most commonplace activity into one of great significance. Helping to get a supply of wood for the kitchen was for him a new and interesting experience. Leaming to row a Doodle Bug was another. Always John seemed to have a song in his heart. Many a lime I watched him through the shop window while he was fishing from the breakwater. Even at that distance, the eagerness with which he hoped to land a fish was shown in his every movement. Up to the kitchen he would invariably rush to announce that a fish dinner for all was now assured - all because he had landed an eight-inch perch. His optimism had no limits.

In 1956, young John became ill. He wrote to Skipper Kinney from his hospital bed in Chicago, Illinois. ! -66- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

Febmary 23, 1956 Dear Ski/)/)er: My mother is writing this letter for me because I am in rhe hospital recove1ing from mrgery 1 had last Monday night. I get fed through. my veins with s11gar and salt water and have a drain rube in my stomach ... My mother said today char 1 may come ro good old Ad11e1m1re Island this rnmmer, bm l will not be able to do very heavy work ...

Marcll8, 1956 Dear Skipper: Just now 1 had the last of my painful treatments. Within four da)'S I will be home ... You remember, Skipper, that a boy at camp b1dt a very small rowboat. Maybe with yoH.r hel.p I could make one like it. I think the boy was R1.tsh Ward. Such a boat would not be expensive. This boat if I remember was a Chris-Craft kit. I bet )'OIL and Mrs. Skipper had a wonderful time in Florida tuirh your trailer. l wish I co uld have been with )'OIL rather than here ...

Two weeks afcer his last letter. I stopped on my way from Fairhope to Winnetka to visit John in his home. He had been out of the hospital two weeks. but was still confined to his bed much of the time. In spite of what he had suffered, his spirit still seemed undaunted. All of his talk was of plans fo r the summer ahead when he could get back to the island. [The boy died soon af1er my visit.] In July a letter from his mother came to the island telling that John's body had been cremated, and that it seemed most appropriate to his parents that the ashes of his mortal remains find their final resting place where he had spent so many happy hours - Adventure Island. And so, on a quiet sunny August afternoon. John· s parents and I scattered his ashes under the three young birches at the head of the harbor: the clump I had moved from the woods years ago and had watched over and tended with loving care. In the hearts of those who knew and loved him, John's spirit can never die. For all of us there is abiding comfort in the knowledge that his earthly remains lie in no cold marble tomb, but wil l eventuall y become part of every leaf. twig and branch of three beautiful silver birches, which, in the years to come. are sure to bring a thrill of beauty to countless others, most of whom are not yet born.

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John Karels: The Rohan Birches Today Every time we enter the island harbor and see the beautiful Rohan Birches standing tall, I think of the story of John Rohan and the Adventure Island Camp. The legacy of Skipper Kinney and the camp has had a profound effect on om family. Over the past forty-five years that the island has served as our family retreat. we have met many men who were boys at the camp and without exception their experience at Adventure Island Camp has had a lasting impression on their lives. John Karels. presenc owner of Adventure Island (2008). ~~ -

Top: Adventure Island boys pictured in the can1p brochure. Bottom: Viking Sailing Ship and Surfboat. Photos circa 1938. Counesy of Ann Petersen Glabe. -68- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader IOO YEAilS OF MEMOilIES

Door County Advocate December 4, 1862 The mail carrier brought us sad news that Rensselaer Marshall, Sen'r, an old resident of the Bay Settlement in Brown county, and who has many relatives in Door County, was found dead in his sail boat last week at Eagle Island, near the village of Ephraim, in the northern part of this county. It appears that he left near Eagle Harbor late in the afternoon to go to Fish Creek, and for some reason instead of going on, put in under the south point of the island, cast out his anchor, and rolling himself up in his sail, went to sleep. On that night it turned very cold, and a snow storm coming on, probably after he wen t to sleep, it is supposed he must have frozen to death in the night, and slept to him alas the sleep of death . The unfortunate man was not discovered, for two or three days after the sad occurrence, when his body was conveyed to his friends.

Door County Advocate October 5, 1903 The most disastrous shipwreck with the accompanying loss of life in the history of the Green Bay region occurred on this Saturday evening, October 3, culminating in the loss of the steamer Erie L. Hacl

Old Betsy When Jake's [Jacob Thorp] son Roy was a little lad he loved to visit his Grandpa Increase Claflin in his big log house on the north point of Fish Creek harbor. The old man would stand in the doorway, his gray­ blue eyes focused out across the marshes to the east. Then he would shout to one of his numerous kids, "Fetch me Old Betsy!" as he called his ancient and weighty Hawkins muzzle loader. A son or daughter would hand him the old rifle and he would fit a percussion cap to the breech fro m the box on the mantle. take a long aim against the door jamb and fire a great charge of smoke and flame. Then he would order two of the kids to slosh out into the marsh and drag the deer into the kitchen. In -69- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader later years, Roy often told his grandchildren of watching his grandfather shoot deer from his front door. From "The Thorps " by Duncan Thorp. unpublished (1983) . Increase Claflin is buried in the pioneer cemete1y near Weborg Ca mpground. Weborg Point was formerly known as Claflin ·s Point.

Door County Advocate August, 1907 Hugh , the li ttle son of John Melville, Fish Creek, died Tuesday night from blood poison . Hugh had been sliding on a plank while at play near home a few weeks before and a sliver penetrated his right thigh. No attention was paid to the matter, as it did not pain him, until a short while before his death , when he complained of a soreness. An examination revealed a very bad case of inflammation and Dr. Egeland having been summoned, he found the situation a grave one. Another physician was called for consultation, but it was too late and the chi ld expired on the date above. The funeral took place from the house on Thursday afternoon. Mrs. Melville is a sister of Roy F. Thorp.

Door County Honeymoon· 1923 Gertrude Netter and her husband Louis arrived from Milwaukee on June 3. 1923. in their brand new Studebaker. The Netters were newlyweds and decided to spend their honeymoon at Welcker' s Resort in Fish Creek. The rate was $4 a day, including three hearty meals. "One of our fa vorite pastimes," recalled Gertrude, '\.vas to investigate abandoned cabins in the park. There was an old log cabin at Tennison Bay. We looked inside and found Swedish papers hanging on the ceiling which had been used for insulation. They were dated J.860 ." From "flsh Creek: The Summertime " Volume II. oral histories gathered by Betsy Guenzel and Libby Ishman. Excerpts from an interview conducted by Linda Neeck SmiU1.

Ted (1901-96) & Ruth Rothschild Johnson (1906-2001) Ted: There were five of us. Art Brocld, he was next to me in age, and Stanley Brodcl, his brother. Roy Holmes, and Art's cousin, Harry Olson. We called him Heck.

Ruth : Just for the heck of it.

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Ted: And [back in 1923] we drove up there with this touring car, up to Ephraim, Wisconsin. through the park, Peninsula State Park ... The Red Peppers of Chicago, that's what we called ourselves, and we had that painted on the side of our touring car, too. It was a 1919 Ford. [\/Ve called ourselves] The Red Peppers because we were hot stuff! That 's what we thought. When we got home, before we sold the car, I remember that we drove dov.rn Mich igan Avenue [in Chicago] with the top down. I guess we couldn't get it up; it was falling apart. One of the fellows in the back seat was holding an open umbrella over his head. And everybody. when we went by . looked and thought we were a bunch of lunatics. Of course. this was during Prohibition. 1923 ...

In 1931 . Ruth and I decided to go camping at Ephraim. Wisconsin. And we were going to stay there, if we could , all summer long. I borrowed a tent from an uncle of mine that lived in Oak Park and we set off in a 1929 Dodge sedan. We arrived and there was one campground in Peninsula State Park and it was always so crowded. But. there was another camping place called Crystal Springs. That was the northeast end of the golf course. Well , we found a place there. a wooden platform, with wooden siding and a wooden gable. And the tent just fit right over it. In the front was a screened-in area: it was a kind of porch. We used it for our kitchen. We had a gasoline stove and we did our cooking there. We ate a lot of perch because we went out and caught plenty of perch every day.

Ruth: They were delicious, just delicious.

Ted: In front of the cabin we had a spring where we kept our mi lk, butter and supplies that needed to be cooled. That was wonderful. In this location there was a building that was built by park employees, a shelter house. You cou Id fix yom dinners in there, and eat there. RuU1 Rothschild Johnson, circa 1930.

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Ruth: We were so tan. We were outdoors a lot, and we were healthy. We had this delicious fish. Everything was cheap. You know, it was during the Depression. There was a place, the Brookside Tea Garden. We'd go there for Sunday dinner. I think it was seventy-five cents, and we had a family style dinner with chicken and potatoes and vegetables and cranberries and pie and everything. Seventy-five cents .. .

Ted: Wilson's store was Lhere. The firs t time [I went for ice cream] I think it was a nickel. ExcerpLs from family interviews conducted by daughter Naomi Johnson Burgbacher {September 4, 1988).

Horseshoe Island Pinch Pie Alma Folda summered on Horseshoe [Eagle] Island. After Peninsula was established in 1909 , the Foldas, a Nebraska bankfog family, retained a life lease. Today, this is the only island that is part of Peninsula State Parle T he 1931 edition of the Joy of Cookb1g includes a recipe for pinch pie, reportedly from Alma Folda. She often served the dessert to .island guests to top off the "grand repast" of a formal tea.

3 egg whites 1 t vi negar 112 t baking powder 1 t water 1/8 t salt sweetened fresh or stewed fruit, about 2 c 1 c sugar whipped cream (homemade is best) 1 t vanilla

Whip egg whites until they form soft peaks. In separate small bowl, combine baking powder, vanilla. vinegar and water. Slowly add sugar (1 tablespoon at a time) to egg wh ites, alternating with liquids. Beat constantly to make meringue. Heap upon lightly greased baking platter or dish, from which it is to be served. Shape the meringue like a pie or tart with a heavy edge. using a spatula or knife. Bake in a very slow oven at 27 5° for one hour, or longer. -72- .Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

When ready lo serve the meringue, fill the center with fruit. Combinations of fruit are good for this purpose - fresh stravvberries or raspberries and sliced bananas, or canned peaches or apricots, pineapple and bananas. This tart is also delicious filled with orange or pineapple ice topped with whipped cream. Top it with a lightly-sweetened and flavored whipped cream. Horseshoe Island photo on page seventy-d1ree taken by Roben C. Davis from Glenn Sohns plane, 1946.

Island "Negotiations" Nebraska banker Frank Folcla purchased Eagle Island in 1888 for $500. Upon his death in 1892, he bequeathed it to his children, E. F. and Martha. The Foldas built a summer estate on the island called Engelmar.

Dear ML Harrington: Owing to our change of address ancl moving during the last couple of months, I have just received your letter of November 22. Under present circumstances and conditions, it is entirely agreeable to us to consider disposing of our interest in Horseshoe Island to the Wisconsin Park Commission. We realize however that the Tsland's value to the the State may be considered on[)' a small .fraction of our idea of its value. We have, I know, over $8,945 invested in it. There is now $3, 500 fire insurance on the buildings .. . In case we can agree, I would very much like to have the amount )'OU ~.uould consider reasonabl.e ancl acceptable as soon as possible.

With sincere good wishes, I am ve1)' truly yo~irs E.F. Folda, Los Angeles, California 1943 February 2, 1944 ! Dear Mr. Folcla: We have gone over the question of your interests on Eagle Island and have looked over the buildings. There is not much use that we can make of them except w tem them clown or to sell them to others for salvage value ... Taking everything into consideration, I would recommend to the

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conse1'vacion commission rhcH iue pay )'Ott $860.00 cash for your inrerest in Eagle Island, incl11ding the bLt.ilclings jLtsC as they srancl ...

C.L. Haningron S11pr. of Forests and Parks July 1, 1944 ! Dear Mr. Harrington: I lwve )'Our letter of lune 26'h, and have decided to acce/>t )'Our offer of $850.00 for my ,·ighrs to Horseshoe Island ...

Sincerely yorirs AM. Folda, Los Angeles, Cal.ifomia

E.F. Folda passed away on January 23, 1944. On October 7, 1944, Alma W. Folda of Los Angeles, California signed a quite claim deed for Horseshoe Island for the sum of $850. Peninsula State Park Archives.

Margaret (Peg) Fitzgerald H agene (1913 · 1998) My years in the park were not really many, about twelve years from 1934 lo 1946 as a full-time summer resident ... In the fall of 1933 my parents were invited to visit Charlie and Hattie Yule in their cabin near Nicolet Bay. While we were there, Hattie persuaded them to apply for a lease [for a cottage in Peninsula]. I believe they talked to Mr. Doolittle and he thought the old stable behind the Eagle Lighthouse could be leased. Their application was successful. In June of 1934, after school was out, my parents and two brothers left for Door County. My sister and I followed six weeks later after a summer school session. We cook the Chicago North\.vestcrn to Green Bay, and the Ahnapee and Western to Sturgeon Bay. This part of the trip was especially leisurely because the train stopped and backed up to retrieve a purse that some lady had dropped overboard. We were met at Sturgeon Bay and driven to our ne"v summer home. 1 must say I was stunned at the sight of this little. old, broken-down log building with a funny little lean-to on one side. Even after six weeks of hard work by my father and brothers, it didn 't show much promise. There were two large tents pitched nearby, one for the boys in the family -74- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader and one for the girls. The Jean-to was being used as a kitchen. The stable was under reconstruction. We had no running water or electricity and most of our cooking was on a kerosene stove. It smelled horrible when things boiled over, and we boiled over a lot of things. We must have had all the appearance of a hippie commune - except the long hair. Mrs. Peterson had leased the old summer kitchen of the lighthouse and moved it into the woods to the north. Mr. Polk and Nevin James had leased the old lighthouse barn and moved it into the woods south of the lighthouse. Our building had no framework, just logs piled one on another and we did not think it would move, so we stayed put near the road and the parking lot. I believe our building dated from 1868. Later, Mrs. Peterson transferred her lease to Dr. Lindall from Rockford , and Mr. Dool ittle fixed an apartment for her on the lighthouse's second floor. For the first year or two, all the families on the grounds used the lighthouse "necessary house," built of brick and located on the north edge of the property. Traffic to and fro was pretty heavy, especially when Fish Creek fever swept through the compound. We all shared the lighthouse pump , too. Not on the grounds. but nearby, on the north side of Tennison Bay, Al Miller and his [brother?] had leased the renmants of an old fishing shack and were remodeling it. That was later leased by Lawrence Murphy of Urbana, lllinois. And on the other side of Tennison were Chris and Clara Licht and their daughters, Edie and Winnie. Thei r house was originally of log but had been covered over with siding. Our life during those early years was very leisurely; it was hard to do much housework in a two-room cabin. Bill Sohns came by to take our grocery order every clay and delivered it the next day. Tom Wiese brought milk and ice and took the laundry. The girls from the Sister Bay bakery came through with bakery goods. So we had no shopping to do or e1rnnds to run. We did a tremendous amount of visiting. In the morning we· d run down to Tennjson for a dip and again in the later afternoon for a more leisurely dip. Usually all our neighbors were down there then . For the first few years. there was a very nice sand beach at Tennison. If there was a good breeze, we might sail into Ephraim, Fish Creek, or to one of the islands. If we had a really spanking breeze, we' cl pack a lunch and go to Chambers. The old hotel was still standing, and some of the cottages. It was fun to walk around and explore ... There was much acHvity landwards also. Truckloads of cheny pickers went on weekly outings and [so did] CCC trucks during the years -75- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader they were in the park. On at least one thrilling occasion a tallyho [fox hunt] swayed by with Irene Stevenson in plumed hat, holding the reins. and a man, beside her. sound ing the tallyho horn. Every morning and evening Mr. Doolittle drove by: in the evening usually Mrs. Doolittle was with him . They often stopped to visit. Our favorite visitor. 1 think, was Hattie Yule. She was a little, short, plump lady with very snappy brown eyes, a wonderful laugh. and a genius for assembling the most unusual costumes. She was more know­ ledgeable about the flora in the park than anyone I have knovvn. She always carried a basket for unusual specimens she might find. or for mushrooms. I think she knew every inch of the park. She knew where al l the raspberry. strawberry, and gooseberry patches were. but she didn't like to tell, at least until her jam was made. Charles and Hattie Yule The most exciting thing was her leave-taking. Charlie would suggest several times that they leave. Hattie didn 't seem to hear him. He would then go out. start the car, honk the horn and start moving. Hattie would instantly yell , jump up and run out to leap on the running board of the moving car and scramble in. Charlie probably had exactly calculated how fast to go to make this maneuver safe for Hattie, but we weren't sure and watched mesmerized every time. To us eagles were very "important personages" and we were always eager to know if they were back and nesting. Mr. Doolittle stopped one morning to say they were back and nesting in the "Twelve Apostles" on Skyline Road . On another occasion they must have nested near Eagle Cave. Hattie Yule was hiking on that trail when an eagle chased her: she fled clown the path fl ai ling about her head with her walking stick! With the beginning of WWII. life in the park really changed. No longer did Bill Sohns bring our groceries or Tom Wiese the milk and ice. -76- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader and take the laundry. By this time, too, the pumps in the park were padlocked ... Exce1pts Door County Historkal Sociely Talk (September 20, 1976).

Washington's Birthday My dad taught at Gibraltar High School from 1936 to 1942. He was the music teacher. The teachers were all very active in the community. On Washfogton's Birthday in February. around 1939 or 40, he and Ray Slaby, Sr. , went down the ski jump. Mr. Slaby was dressed as George and my dad was dressed as Martha. Captain Joel Blahnik (2008).

My 90-Foot Jump on One Ski My first trip to the annual [ski jump] tournament at Peninsula State Park was in 1939 , and each year following, through 1942 ... As I recall, Anton Martinson was the main spark plug in the Door County Winter Sports Club and took care of all the arrangements fo r the skiers. The Tournament was sanctioned by the Central U.S. Ski Association. The crowds that attended these contests were always the most enthusiastic that I've ever seen! In fact, when the competition ended, they insisted on having us perform some exhibition runs. So we made some twin jumps and diamond jumps (one skier, then "twin" skiers side-by-side, closely followed by one more skier) with the object being to try to have all four skiers in the air at one time. George Sandle, my close friend. said, "Let's try it on one ski!" which we had been doing at home on a much smaller hill. So we dropped the trapdoor to the second platform (about three-quarters of the way to the top) and started jumping. Well, George and I each made at least five attempts, falling after landing on all but one ride. l was lucky enough to make it all the way to the end of the outrun on one jump of 90 feet. We ran up and down that hill until we were exhausted. I was a member of the original 10111 Mountain Division, which was a highly specialized WWII infantry unit, comparable to the Rangers. and there were three others from our club who also were ski troopers. Correspondence from Carl}. Sorenson (2000).

Nancy Pitches a Lean-to The dress of the day was a swi mming suit. If it was really cold in the early morning, as it often was, we wore soft, cozy, gray, hooded -77- Peninsula State Paik Centennial Reader sweatshirts and pants. We wrapped hot bricks straight from the fire in newspaper and put them into om cots for wannth on cold nights. We went to bed when darkness fell and the campfires were glowing, and got up early in the morning to the wheedling calls of the gu lls out on their early morning forays. In 1939, my sister Nancy broke her hip and was hospitalized most of the summer. She was able to get along all right the summer of 1940, so we returned to Nicolet Bay. We camped on the side of the road away from the beach. That vvas the year Dad rented a camping trailer because he thought he wou ld upgrade our living conditions. Well, we were all incensed, especially Nancy, who showed her contempt by pitching a Jean-to and sleeping in that. Camping couldn't mean sleeping in a trailer! Camping was tenting in our minds. I really don 't remember going in the trailer much; it seemed so slick and civilized. Mother used it for storing food and equipment. Dad said it was the fanciest storage closet he had ever seen. Gretchen Wjjterding Maring, from Peninsula Camp Stories and Recipes (2005).

The Hanging Tree and the Roller Coaster Road Once. there grew a large tree very close to the west side of the road betvveen the tower and Hill 17. It had a large, sturdy overhanging limb that hung out over a third of the road. It became a "lark " for college boys to hang a life-size, straw-stuffed "dummy'' by the neck from that limb, and cars would brake with squeals when they'd see it. One year, after the park crew had disposed of this object several times, a mound with a cross atop and some plastic flowers appeared at the side of the road. Again the culprits resumed hanging this "scare" another year and it was said that a lady had a near heart attack at the sight. So, first the limb was removed, and then later the tree itself. The road that passed the Kodanko farm, Middle Road. was originally a logging road that followed several deep "clips" which had been merely graveled. but not graded down. Teens of tourists from summer homes in Fish Creek and Ephraim got thrills (nearly of roller-coaster type) by driving down the Kodanko hill and bounding up and down those dips in the road, becoming almost airborne. Finally, one top-heavy car, loaded with kids. came down way too fast, lost control, and veered into the woods "totaling" the parents' car. Several of them ended up in the hospital with broken ribs. arms and legs. Then the road was smoothed and blacktopped. The gravel had contributed to the uncontrollability, of -78- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader course - but the heavy cedar brush along the road had also cushioned the car from worse casualty. There were not even ambulances then. Thelma Erickson (2008).

Mom Bakes a Cherry Pie I camped at Peninsula with my parents and sister from 1943 until 1952. Before that, we went to California in the summer. My dad was a principal and had summers off. Then the war came. We couldn't get gas and tires to go to California, so we came to Door County. The first year we came, Dad drove a 1937 Pontiac. We took off at 12 or 1 a.m. when it was cooler, hoping the tires would last a little longer. It took us eight to ten hours to drive fro m Elmhurs t, Illinois, to Peninsula. Back then, it cost $18 to camp all summer. When the park raised the price to twenty-five cents a day, the campers almost had a revolt. My family camped at Weberg Point in a tent that was like a canvas cottage. I remember one year [the park] hired Jamaicans to work on the pier at Weberg Point. They all had British accents. The first shelter at Weborg Point seemed bigger [than the one there now]. The guys would go there in the evening, with gas lanterns, to play poker. A cast iron cook stove stood against the right wall. It had a reservoir for hot water. If my mom wanted to bake a pie, she'd go to the shelter house. She'd roll out the crust with a pop bottle, and pit cherries by hand. One time she dropped the pie on the way back to the tent. I can 't remember, but we probably ate it anyway because you didn 't waste things in those days. I remember seeing German POWs in Sturgeon Bay. They had "POW" on the back of their dungarees. They were just walking around town. I don 't remember seeing a guard with them. They were probably glad to be in Door County. I remember the roller coaster road [Middle Road]. There are scrapes on the roads where the trailer hitches hit it. John Tumer, from Peninsula Camp Stories and Recipes (2005) .

Eric Beckstrom My father, William Beckstrom, was Peninsula Superintendent from 1943 to 1954. Some of the people I remember who worked for Dael were Pat Kinsey (the plumber) , Norman Jarman and Sy Syler (laborers) , George Froemming (the mechanic) and Bill Anderson. Bill was a general -79- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader contractor who worked at the golf course. Art Henry's boys and other local kids sometimes played tricks on him. Lynn Hanson and Kenny Nash both worked as assistant superintendents. Kenny drove a Nash Rambler and worked as the park constable. In those days, the [ranger] didn 't wear a uniform, just a hat and a badge. He had a crank siren [hidden) under the Rambler's hood. One time, local kids got hold of another crank siren and pulled Kenny over. They didn't recognize his car and thought he was a tourist. They were going to give him a ticket. Boy, were they surprised to find out it was the park constable! I was lucky enough, along with my brothers Bill and John, to grow up in "the best backyard in Wisconsin." At that time, Sven's Tower was still standing, although condemned. It was ten feet shorter than Eagle Tower. We used to climb it all the time until they removed the access stairs to keep everyone off. It was pulled down with a bulldozer about 1950. The tents at Camp Meenahga were pitched on wooden platforms. After the season was over and the tents taken down, I remember crawling under the wooden platforms to look for any pennies or nickels that had fallen through the cracks. Gertrude Lund was my babysitter. She lived at Weborg Point. She was housekeeper for Bill and Al Carlson. Do you know what we called the trail behind their farm? King's Trail. Bill had a horse named King, and I used to ride him to help gather firewood. [That trail is called Sunset Bike Trail today.] I remember one year Dad built us a motor bike out of plywood. It had a gas engine from an old washing machine. After Dad retired from the park, I worked under Lynn Hanson. I helped cut trees through Weborg Campground where pipeline was set down, and also cut trees where the sewage treatment plant was later built. Interviews conducted by Kathleen Harris (2005, 2008).

Door County Advocate March 3, 1944 Their Model-A Ford coach crashing suddenly through weak ice in 24 feet of water off Peninsula park while seeking a spot to set nets, two well known local brothers, Alfon S.H . Jensen, 46, and Emery G. Jensen, 51 , were drowned sometime late Monday afternoon. Since no one was in the vicinity at the time, they were not seen and concern was not expressed for their safety until evening when they failed to come home -80- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader for supper ... About in the middle of the [next] morning Warden Hallie Rowe, who was with the searching parties, located a hole in the ice about 1500 feet off the shore of the park midway between Eagle Island and the park lighthouse. A closer inspection resulted in finding a pair of glasses on the ice. Dragging equipment was dropped at once, and the body of Emery was recovered about 2:30. Efforts were then placed on getting out the car. Park Supt. Paul Lawrence and his crew furnished timbers to go with the coast guard tackle, and the machine was dragged 300 feet to shallow water where it was hoisted out. Not finding Alton inside, grappling was continued, and the body was brought up about 4 o'clock. That both men probably could have been rescued had someone seen them drop through was evident from the fact that they were not trapped inside the car. Blood on the ice proved that at least one of the men had come to the surface. The car doors were closed, but the windshield was broken, showing a possible way of escape. Spokes of the steering wheel were snapped off, indicating a struggle to get out ... Emery lived in Peninsula park near Ohman's tavern [Highland Road], and Alton at the south edge of the village of Ephraim. They followed the carpenter trade, as well as fishing, and together maintained a number of summer cottages for rent.

Edward C. Mueller (1932 ·) Peninsula State Park was one of my greatest learning experiences in the summer of 1957 as a member of the UW-Stevens Point Natural Resources Camp. I was the "old" teacher among eleven [co!Jege] students. My car was a 1956 red and white Ford station wagon that the students called The Tomato Can! Gas cost 25-29¢ a gallon. With ornithologist Harold Wilson, we banded over 900 gulls and 20 cormorants on Hat Island. We went out to Plum Island on the Barny Devine, checked weirs for lamprey eels, and worked hard. We learned a lot under Professor Paul Yambert. We lived in the building now used as the Nature Center. The weather was great, but warm, when we spent the whole day sawing firewood, which was free to campers - and they built huge campfires. We had twelve guys and very little money. We ate a lot of SPAM. Correspondence (2007).

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1970 Fourth of July in Peninsula State Park

Photo source: Door County Advocate

As the campground attains morning speed after full bladders awaken the hopeful and a blue jay swoops to vie with the red squirrel for pieces of an offered Chips Ahoy cookie I ponder just how many zippers are in the big park right now

David Zip Dix, 1999

Fudgsicles, a Camaro and Hitting Redial I first came to Peninsula in the year 1972 at age twenty-six. The first time I camped, all my gear fit into a Camaro. Now I need two trucks to haul everything. Bill Rudrud (2000).

I first came to Peninsula in 1969 at age seven. The first time I camped at Peninsula my parents hid in the bushes by Park Headquarters to be the first at picking a site in Nicolet Bay - on the water of course. My husband and I have never had to hide in bushes to get a site, although

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I spend the better part of a day hitting redial to get a reservation. Liz Elliot (I 999).

I firs t came to Peninsu la in 1956 at age seven. I remember eating Fudgsicles from the Nicolet Bay Camp Store and going to the park dump. We watched the black bears while sitting in my parents' car. Sherry Wachholz (1999).

Camping In Grandpa Wachholz 's floorless, canvas, deer-hunting tent, 1958. The older girls ha\le their hair fo pincurls to look spiffy for church the next day. From left to right: Sherry, Pat, John and Sue Wachholz.

-83- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader :KOJ>Alf:KO FAil:M: GIIlL

Joanne Kodanko WehUng

I spent my childhood on our family farm on Middle Road. My parents bought the farm from my dad's sister, Mrs. Anna Pleck, in 1915 or 1916. Fred and Katherine were born earlier. Laura, Margaret, Marian and I were born on the farm in the park. I was the only one who was delivered (1927) by a doctor, William Sneeberger from Ephraim. My sisters were delivered by midwives. My father, John, was born in Austria. He was a small man. Dad played the fiddle. Sometimes there were house parties. We rolled up the rugs and danced. My mother Ethel Starrine was short. She had blue eyes. Her father Eric was fro m Sweden. Ma was always knitting woolen stockings. Some sayings of hers that I remember are: "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach," when we took a big helping of food; "You make a better door than a window," when we stood in the light; and, "You are slower than molasses in January," when 'Ne were moving slow. My parents spoke German. They didn' t teach us to speak it, as they wanted us to speak English. When the relatives got together, they always spoke German. I think they didn't want us to know what they were saying. I remember the burial of Chief Kahquados in May of 1931 . It is my first memory. My dad held me on hJs shoulder so I could see better. I remember the Indian dancers and all the old cars parked on the golf course. I started school in Fish Creek when I was almost six years old. School started at 9:00 a.m. We left home at 8:00 a.m. to walk the three miles. It was a mile-and-a-half on the highway, then a mile-and-a-half through the woods. During the fall and winter. it was dark when I got to the woods. Our trail was well traveled so I could tell when I got off it. I would sing to let the animals know I was there. Sure was glad to see the light from the oil lamp in the front window when I neared home.

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We carried our lunch in an empty syrup pail. Butter and honey on fresh , warm bread was an after school snack. Yum. My grandmother gave us the honey, for she rafaed bees.

Chores We all had chores to do. We had to fill the wood boxes and pump water to fill the reservoir in the kitchen stove, and the pail for drinking water. We pumped our own water from the well. It took two of us to pump, we were so little. We had a big tank to catch rainwater, used for laundry and washing. We used rainwater to wash our hair. In summer. we had to strain out the mosquito wigglers before we used il. Rinsed our hair with vinegar in the water to remove soap, and make it soft. My chores included picking beITies, washing clothes, and milking cows. Also, I used to have to clean my dad's spittoon. We had an icebox and had to remember to empty the drip pan under the ice, or it would run over on to the floor. In winter, men cut blocks of ice from the bay to store in an icehouse at The Rock. They put sawdust around the blocks to keep them from melting. The ice was used for mixed drinks at The Rock, a nightclub built by Louis Willems when I was in grade school. Sometimes, a band played at The Rock.

We Made Our Own Fun There was no electricity on Middle Road. When we wanted to listen to the radio, we used the battery from the truck. In the evenings we listened to One Man's Family, Mayor of the Town, The Shadow. Fibber Magee and Molly, and Henry Aldrich. On Sunday afternoons we would read or work jigsaw puzzles. In late summer, the Camp Meenahga girls had a horse show, using [Saddlebred] horses from Cornil's Stables. They also put on a play. We walked to watch, and sat on the hill overlooking the stage, near the tennis court. There were cedar trees behind the stage. The glrls went behind the trees to change [costumes]. When we wanted to swim, we walked from the farm to Shanty Bay. Sometimes we'd go swimming in Tennison Bay. I also rode my bicycle all over the park. My sister Margaret had gone to work in Mi lwaukee and bought a bicycle to ride when she came home to visit. She couldn't take the bike with her to the city, so she said I could use it. -85- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

I knit. crocheted and did embroidery. Everybody wore aprons and embroidered the aprons. I also took piano lessons from Miss Kuechler.

W inter Mem.ories We didn't have snowsuits. We wore long underwear. My mother knit us long wool st0ckings. She could read while knitting. She read all the books that we brought home from school. In the winter. our stockings got wet so we were uncomfortable in school. The snowplow ca rnejust to our house. There was no traffic. My dad made skis which we used on the road, also in the yard. Fred made a big bobsled and used it mostly for hauling wood lo fill the wood boxes - also to pull me and my sisters around. When there were ski meets at the park ski jump. we walked over to watch. One cl ay, when I was about twelve, Fred and I walked there. Fred brought along a scoop shovel, but I didn't know why. I used it to slide down the ski hill. What a ride! In the early years, ,•...... ,... we had candles on the Christmas tree. We lit them in the evening for a little while, but had to watch them aJI the time. After we got the generator, we had electric, colored lights. The tree was put up and decorated on Christmas Eve, after we kids went to bed. Then Santa came and the gifts were under the tree in the morning. We always got up early. The gifts were mostly homemade. My mother knil mictens, -86- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader caps and socks. She also made dolls. My mother crocheted rag rugs, too. She cut or tore up old clothes into strips and sewed them together. She used a wooden hook that my dad carved.

Spring at Kodanko Farm In March, my dad would tap maple trees in the woods across the road. In the spring, the woods were full of mayflowers. We picked handfuls at one sitting. They sure smelled good. Now there aren't too many, thanks to the deer. We had a big garden, about an acre. My dad planted mostly vegetables; Ma would plant flower seeds. We sold vegetables and flowers at the farm. Pa supplied Camp Meenahga with vegetables. He brought back the garbage to feed the pigs. We used "wolf scent" to keep deer away from the garden. There was a big raspberry patch on the west end of the farm. We sold a lot from a stand along the road, fifty cents a quart. We grew a few strawberries, and also had a few fruit trees. Ma would can about 400 quarts, a variety of fruits and vegetables, and also pickles. We had a large crock that we filled with dill pickles (also sauerkraut). We stored a lot of potatoes, beets and carrots in the cellar under the house. In the spring we cut up the leftovers and fed them to the cows and horses. The "table rock" was always there. They got soil for the golf course from the nearby fields. [Kondanko Field, still expansive today and also transected by a ski trail, has bedrock naturally exposed at the smface.]

Farm Animals and Threshing Day We raised chickens and traded the eggs for staples at the Anderson Store in Ephraim. Pa would bring us a bag of hard candy that the Andersons gave him for us. We had pigs and chickens, but no sheep. I remember one turkey that always chased me. I'd run back in the house. We had to hunt for it on Thanksgiving. We had ten to twelve cows for milking. We made butter from the cream, in a butter churn. We had to use food coloring to make the butter yellow. Otherwise, it was white like the milk. We sold the bull calves for veal and raised the females. My dad took the milk to the cheese factory that my uncle owned at County F and Maple Grove Road. In the summer, we girls watched the cows in the park fields that are now -87- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader overgrown. We watched the cows so they didn't take off. They were not fenced in. There's a mound near Hanson's Dale [intersection of Hemlock and Middle roads] . That's where I used to sit and read Nancy Drew books while I watched the cows. Sometimes, when I didn't pay attention , the cows would be gone. Most of the time, they went home for water. Sometimes I had to track them on the trails. We raised two pigs to butcher in the fall. I remember the big, iron kettle where we would scald the pigs. We made liver and blood sausage from the pork. We made head cheese from the pig's head and feet. We smoked the hams and bacon and stored them in salt (to preserve the

Hemlock Road

Fields

Old Road Pine Trees

Raspberry Patch Maple Woods Old Cherry Orchard

Hay Field Garden - About 1 Acre

[Ski Trail Today] 'Table" Rock Trees

School Trail Apple Trees Fence Outhouse Kodanko Farm House Yard Woodshed Pumphouse - Windmill Pig Pen Garage Granary - Machine Shed Chicken Coop Barn Middle Road Silo

To Highland Road Owl City Trail meat) in a big wooden barrel. Mice could not get into the barrel. We also butchered a cow, and mixed beef and pork to make smoked sausage. We grew oats. wheat, corn and hay. In spring we picked stones off the fields before they were planted. We carried the stones to a wagon. and my dad then drove the horses and wagon to the stone fence, where we unloaded them. In summer, we walked through the oat fields and -88- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

pulled the yellow mustard while it still bloomed, so it wouldn't go to seed. My dad farmed with two horses. Dick and Lady. We didn't have a tractor; Dad cut hay with a mower. then raked it into windrows. Then, we stacked it into small piles and loaded the hay onto the wagon - by hand. My dad backed the wagon next to the upstairs barn floor. He used the horses. and ropes and pulleys. With a pitchfork. he pulled the hay up and over. to then drop it in the mows. Finally. we spread it evenly. The grain was cut with a binder. We stacked it in shocks to dry until it was loaded on the wagon. Dad parked the wagon on the barn floor and spread the bundles on the hay until the threshing machine came. We waited in the morning for the sound of the steam engine to come up the road. There were lots of men to help. The threshing machine was parked on the barn floor. Some men threw the bundles into the machine. Others put the full bags on their shoulders and carried them to the granary, then dumped the grain in bins. The machine blew the straw out the back door onto a stack. The straw was used for bedding for the animals.

Tige, Mickey and Kodanko Kittens The dog we had when I was little was a collie named Tige. He was old. After he died, we got Mickey. a German shepherd. He was a good dog. In the mornings, when my dad would get the milk pails, he didn't have to be told to get the cows from the field. He just did it. One time he got too close to a porcupine and got quills in his nose and paws. Mickey was a male dog and he would wander. One time he came home with a bullet in his hip. One time he didn't come back. I sure missed him. We didn't get another dog because we knew we had to move [from the park]. There were always a lot of cats around. The mother cat would hide the babies. mostly in the hay mow. We watched the mother to see where she went. We found the kittens as they would cry when she came to them. Sometimes we would sneak the little kittens upstairs to our bed. My mother didn't like that, as they weren't allowed in the house. There were two bedrooms upstairs. Fred had the small one and the five girls the big room. There were two double beds and a child· s bed that was mine until my older sisters went to work in Madison. Margaret and Marian worked in Milwaukee. I was the only girl still at home when we moved.

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~VIlTAIN ~ALL

Fred Alley was an actor fo r T he Heritage Ensemble, a theater troupe which began performing in Peninsula in 1970. ln 1990, he co-founded the American Folklore Theatre. Alley wrote these lyrics fo r Giiys on f ce.

Everytbing is N ew Oere's a shanty here and cl ere Out across de snow Tracks dat lead to anywhere Dat you want to go

Smell the woodsmoke in de air Hear a b ird o r two Feel the quiet everywhere Everything is new

Out here where de sky begins Dere is nothing but the wind Everything is new

Fred Alley greets the AFT crowd, .l 999. Pharo by Roger Hamilton. -90- Peninsula State Park Centennial Reader

Peninsula State Park Arch.ives and Photo Collections

The primary source for the Centennial Reader are the Peninsula State Park Archives, including articles submitted by Ron LeSaar titled "Charles Myr Lesaar: Biography of the Artist" and "An Oral History from John Lesaar."

Photos were selected from the Peninsula Archives which include the following collections:

Camp Meenahga Collection Roy Gauger Collection Ann Petersen Glabe Collection Litkea Collection E.B. Collection Wachholz Collection.

Peninsula State Park wishes to give special acknowledgement to Fred Johnson, editor of the Door County Almanak No. 3 (1986) and the family of E.F. and Alma Folda. The Folda legacy on Horseshoe Island was told by Stanford H. Sholem in Horseshoe Island: The Folda Years (1998) . Photo, below: Looking at Fish Creek from Weborg Campground, circa 1940s. Note rock on right, now at Nature Cemer. E.B. Collection.

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Authors, Peninsula Interviews, and Historical Sources

Fred Alley Marge and Ernie Krubsack Mike Alloway Irene Lo gerquist Edgar Anderson Gretchen Wilterding Maring Norm Aulabaugh Edie Julia Duclon McMil lan Eric Beckstrom Lauren Mitterman Tom Blackwood Edward C. M ueller Joel Blahnik Jack Notabaa1t John and Laurie ColJison Gary Patzke John Brann Lloyd Ressler Naomi Burbacher Bill Rudrud Frances Burton Vivian Duclon Shine Betty Chomeau Linda Neeck Smith Merlie Cox Carl J. Sorenson Robert C. Davis Harvey Stahl David Zip Dix Eve Steurnagel Buck Eckert Lorraine Stoklosa Hank Eckert Duncan T horp Liz Elliot William Tishler Thelma Erickson John Turner William S. Gronier Sherry Wachholz David Gjeston Dick Woerfel Ralf and Dorothy Halverson Peg Hagene Roger Hamilton Herbie Hardt Kathleen Harris Carl Johnson Ted and Ruth Johnson John Karels Joanne Kodanko Wehling Itsie Krause Janet Beyer Krause

Dr. Herman Welcker, his wife Henriette, and their daughter Mathilda vacationed in Door County in the early 1890s.

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A stroll along tlw sl1acly trails of florsesl10e Island, circa 1909.

T l1is picture, fro111 die personal colJ eclio11 of Folda family dcsc:enclcnts, appeared iu llorsesfrne lsfalll/: Tf1c Fofda 1'ears ( 1998). Youn~ J.larccll.i Folda is wall~i11¢ with l1er nursemaid.