Counties of Wisconsin; 16; Door County

One of the counties of Wisconsin has a location at 44 degrees 50 minutes north latitude and 87 degrees 20 minutes west longitude. A peninsula. Fish boiled. Shipyards apple and cherry tree use. The County of course is adored. In this program University of Wisconsin Extension staff and area residents discussed with their county of Wisconsin. First Stanley Green was asked about the county's name the name probably comes from the store which was the only one with geographical picture of a commuter plane. The county was set aside from Brown. Meakin 51.

What is that and I guess store the strait separates the Washington Island probably the rest of the plains or up off the tip of white in the darkness. This was a passage it was used by all the boats in the area it was the only part of the peninsula. There was no one to give that geographically known to the many people and it seemed to mix with me for the county time. Can you tell me something about the early history. Well the history of the county really began. With the coming of the. The. Development of the United States of America before that time you'd only been used by unions and a few traders for a trapper's. The first wave of settlement was largely fisherman following the fish from the Straits Meccano. Came over to Washington island located there and

efficient stations alongside of the western shoreline of Whitefish Bay for example. These fishermen poor years constitute the only resident population and they were resident only during a portion of the year. It wasn't until the 1850s a permanent residence begins that machine sells in the county. The first large settlement was on Sturgeon Bay the result of. The. Development of sawmills by going to Sears and colonies from Lockport New York. There was a slow migration of. Scandinavians bow to the Bay Area into the eeprom area is relatively unimportant. And the next large group of settlers who came in with the

Belgians. You'd be between 18 and 55 and between sixty three waves but primarily the settlement in the early days came from the Yankees. The people from the New York we believe in sea coast. Who came piling the lumber industry into the area. Many of them stayed and they became the power structure of the community from fishing and shipbuilding. We moved to agriculture as horticultural agent cliff Ehlers talks with Bill Mitchell the agricultural picture and our county differs considerably from agriculture in other areas of the state. In so far as a considerable portion of the agricultural economy in this area is based on production of apples and red tart cherries. Historical accounts indicate that apples were planted in this area on a commercial basis over 100 years a goal by commercial I

mean a planning of greater size than needed to supply the family so that some could be offered for sale. Similarly charities were offered were planted and offered for sale prior to the turn of the century. With the phenomenal success of these early planting sizeable Lake ridges were planted during the decade of the teens and according to a statistical report of 1900 or colony had at that time about thirty five hundred acres of cherries and about seventeen hundred acres of apples as well as considerable acreage of the small fruits namely strawberries raspberries and courage. This acreage continued to increase over the years to a peak of eleven thousand acres of cherry and about 3000 acres of our own by the early 50s. Since that time in fact newsies problems. Day labor problems and the increased land values and the general economic cost right please have resulted in a decline in total

acreage. Where the industry largely centered around small work are done many farms farmers which were basically dairy farms and of course we did have a battering of a few large operations. Today we have fewer growers but with moderate sized operations. So food production has always been a highly specialized phase in