Door County: Traditions of a Rugged Pioneer
Past. one hour videotape by Sheri Gibbs;
$19.95
suggested retail price.
Documentary videos have become an art form,
what
with Ken Burns' Civil War and baseball sagas. Now Sheri Gibbs of Sister
Bay has done one, lovingly, for Door County.
The title, "Door County: Traditions of a Rugged
Pioneer
Past, " hints at the flavor of the piece. Although the film does have
modern sequences, it is not a plug for tourism. Instead it captures the
spirit
of the people who settled the rockbound peninsula in times when
survival
was more important than occupancy rates.
Gibbs tapped excellent sources for old photos and
even
some sixty-year-old movie film. Music by Kirk Hanser and Barry J.
Waldrep
provides continuity and adds to the flavor.
Gibbs goes back to the beginning, when French
explorer
Jean Nicolet discovered the Door peninsula but not a passage to India.
She
moves to the peninsula's first white settler, Increase Claflin, who
sold
wood to passing schooners.
The film covers all of Door's settlements in the
order
in which each was founded, beginning with Washington Island. Gardner in
southern
Door County was named after entrepreneur F. B. Gardner who employed
over 400
men in his lumber, grist mill and shipbuilding operations.
0tumba became the City of Sturgeon Bay. Joseph Harris
Sr.,
founder of the Door County Advocate
in 1862, was the driving force behind construction of the canal between
the
bay of Green Bay and Lake Michigan. According to the film, over 100
vessels
were lost in 1872, the year the canal project started. Before the canal
was
dug, schooners had to round treacherous Death's Door off the tip of the
peninsula.
The film covers the Belgian immigration to
northeastern
Wisconsin, which started in the 1850s, then swings to Fish Creek and
the
founding Thorps, Asa, Jacob and Levi. Asa was aboard a ship coming down
the
Green Bay side of the peninsula when the captain told him he needed a
place
to pick up wood. Asa bought land and Fish Creek was on its way.
The Moravians came to Ephraim in 1853 and soon found
that
the Biblical name they gave their new home was a misnomer. It was not a
"doubly
fruitful" land. They managed, however, shipping cedar posts to Green
Bay.
They bought their original land for $1.12 an acre. That wouldn't come
close
to buying an inch of Ephraim shore frontage today.
Ephraim had the first church (Moravian) and first
school
on the peninsula.
The film gives credence to the actually apocryphal
story
that Egg Harbor got its name from an egg throwing battle between rival
boat
crews. Thus do legends become history.
Baileys Harbor was the first county seat in 1851 but
later
gave way to Sturgeon Bay. Like Jacksonport, it was the site of heavy
lumbering.
Naturalist Roy Lukes, one of the film's narrators, says he hates to
think
what the lumbermen of that era would have done with chain saws and
FWD'S.
Shipping was heavy. One light house keeper counted
5,000
vessels in 1870, and that was just what he saw in the daytime.
Shipwrecks
kept the Life Saving Service busy and there are old stills of rescue
operations.
The founding of Sister Bay, Ellison Bay, and the
other
villages are also covered. And some of the most beautiful contemporary
footage
in the video is of Gills Rock, founded by Elias Gill.
The social impact of the Civil War is covered, as
well
as the devastation from Door's portion of the Peshtigo Fire of 1871.
Washington Island, which has excellent archives, has
photos
showing the Icelandic settlement and history of the island's ferry line.
There are also pictures of the passenger steamers
that
came here before the automobile made them obsolete.
There is film of the dedication of the Indian
memorial
pole in Peninsula Park and of Potawatomi Chief Simon Kahquados's
funeral
there in 1930.
The film ends with modern scenics and the arts,
bright
contrasts to Door County's "rugged pioneer past."
-Chan Harris, retired editor of the
Door County Advocate and great grandson of
its
founder, Joseph Harris Sr. [Chan passed away in 1997. He is sincerely
missed by those who knew and loved him.]
