Profile of Door County, "Wisconsin Communities"

[sound of waves]

ANNOUNCER: This is a sound belonging to the ages. Civilization adds new sounds and changes those. But the sound of water moving with the wind is forever the same. This wind which blows from water to land is tempered by water, now as it was in the beginning. In ages too early for history and legend, the earth's crust moved in ways known to the science of geology, causing an arm to reach up from Wisconsin into the waters of the Great Lakes. The community which grew on this peninsula took its character from the waters and from the air tempered by the water.

[sounds of ships]

ANNOUNCER: Ships are a part of this community, ships that come from yards where noisy machinery magnifies the strength of men. Men with machines mold cargo carriers for the Great Lakes. Without the surrounding waters this would not be. The waters of this community are populated not only with cargo carriers. There are also pleasure crafts of people vacationing, people attracted by water that reaches to the horizon, people who bring nine million dollars into the community each year. Another type of craft seen in the waters of this community travels in a convoy of sea gulls. Out of the bays and inlets gulls follow the commercial fisherman to and from his nets, feeding on the remnants of his catch.

[gulls calling, sound of waves]

ANNOUNCER:And here is the sound of the cherry industry which provides a colorful thirty-five percent of the community's agricultural income. But the sounds of the resort industry, of commercial fishing, of the cherry business, and of ship building: these sounds would not be without the surrounding waters. The waters are Green Bay and Lake Michigan; together they form the common denominator of our soil.

ANNOUNCER: The State Broadcasting Service presents the Door County Profile, another in a series of programs about Wisconsin people and places, a series designed to show how people live in the cities, towns, and counties of our state. These programs are prepared by State Network Production teams and documented by tape recordings. Here is the story of Door County as told by the people who live there and by 00:03:00Carl Schmidt, narrator-producer.

SCHMIDT: That bell is the signal to get out of the way. Two hundred tons are on the move and in your direction.

UNIDENTIFIED: This what they call a gantry crane. It's set on extra heavy railroad tracks and has a carrying capacity of sixty-five tons. We do all our installation with a gantry crane on our barge. It has a 125 foot boom. We use it for setting boats up to about sixty ton in the water.

SCHMIDT: The gantry crane, 200 tons of animated steel reaching nearly 200 feet into the air, a landmark in Sturgeon Bay, the county seat of Door County. Around us are the other machines, the buildings, and the men of the Christy Corporation. Standing in the shadow of the crane, we talked with Bernard Lino, secretary and general manager of the shipyard, about the corporation's current project.

LINO: Well, at the present moment we are in the process of building a soybean oil tanker for the Cargo Grain Company and also a tow boat or tug to go with the tanker as a unit. It's a new innovation; the tug fits into a notch, literally a notch, in the stern of the barge. It's used for pushing the barge on its travels through the Welland Canal going between Chicago and New York. When it's out in open water on the lake, the tugboat will go around to the bow of the boat and pull it.

SCHMIDT: Leaving the noises of construction we followed Mr. Lino along the shipyard railway tracks to the air-conditioned office building. There we met L. E. Randall, vice-president of the corporation. Mr. Randall spoke of the value of ship-building to the community.

RANDALL: In the past two years, the Christy Corporation take-home payroll has 00:05:00been in the neighborhood of two million dollars. Employment is about two hundred people during the summer season irrespective of the weather. This discussion includes May to November as the summer season. And the employment is double during the winter months. Directly, this payroll probably effects the economy of at least a thousand of the total Door County population or about one thousand dollars per capita of this group each year. Indirectly it is difficult to determine anyone in the county who does not share in some way by the efforts of the people working at the yard through taxes, utilities, insurance, food, clothing, shelter, recreation and so forth.

SCHMIDT: And from Mr. Lino-

LINO: The next major project is going to be the car ferry for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. Incidentally, that's one of the largest car ferries ever built 00:06:00and possibly the largest boat ever built on Lake Michigan.

SCHMIDT: The car ferry contract is worth five million dollars, a graphic illustration of the importance of shipbuilding to Door County, five million dollars brought in by the waterway. Travelling north from Sturgeon Bay you can choose Highway 57 along Lake Michigan or 42 on the Green Bay side. If you're on vacation, chances are you'll find whatever you want somewhere along one of these highways. You may choose to stay at one of forty-three American plan hotels, or one of 110 house-keeping cottage resorts. Perhaps you'll arrive early enough to get a choice camping spot at one of the state parks.

THORPE: One of the most popular campgrounds in Peninsula State Park developed an intense rivalry among campers who returned year after year for preferred spots near the shoreline, so much so that finally they kept coming earlier and earlier 00:07:00until finally the Park had to be formally open to camping on one given night. May 1, midnight April 31, and now tourists come with their trailers far in advance of the season, take housekeeping cottages overnight, gas up the cars and have the motors running, and at midnight they leap out of their cottages and into their cars and go tearing away for their favorite campground.

SCHMIDT: That was Duncan Thorpe, speaking from the very busy Door County Chamber of Commerce office. His concern is to help you find a satisfactory place to stay during your vacation or a satisfactory place to fish.

MAYHEW: We catch three main varieties up here. Small mouth bass is probably number one and we frequently say that we're the world's fastest small mouth bass fishing area. I don't know how we can prove that or how anyone can disprove it, so it's one of those statements that we make because we're enthusiastic about 00:08:00our fishing.

SCHMIDT: But maybe you don't take your fishing seriously.

MAYHEW: Most people who go fishing are going for a day's or a half a day's outing on a boat. That's the primary thing. The fishing is just something to do while they're there and if they catch a few fish, why they're happy about it, but they're not the type of person that will get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and stay out until sundown.

SCHMIDT: That was Tom Mayhew, a resort owner at Ephraim on the Green Bay side of the peninsula. Ephraim is one of the most popular resort towns in Door County.

MAYHEW: Ephraim is 100% resort area. You take the resorts out of Ephraim and Ephraim will go back to the wilderness very rapidly.

SCHMIDT: Ephraim was established nearly a hundred years ago by the Moravians, a Norwegian religious group. Their influence gave the town a characteristic almost unheard of in resort areas.

MAYHEW: Being originally a religious settlement, the town was dry. It has 00:09:00remained so. Then since they repealed the Prohibition Amendment, the question of wet or dry has come up and was overwhelmingly defeated. We feel that many of the people who come to Ephraim come because there are no taverns. While they themselves may drink, they feel that they don't want to have their children hanging around taverns, and would prefer to either have a cocktail in their rooms or cottage or go out for it. And the village is dry as I said, and always has been, and frankly I think it always will be.

SCHMIDT: North of Ephraim past Sister Bay and Ellison Bay, Highway 42 runs to 00:10:00the water's edge at Gills Rock. There you board a ferry and cross the Door from which the county gets its name. Death's Door, they call it, remembering a legend, a legend of the 300 Indian warriors who travelled by canoe to attack an enemy camp. The Indians were drowned when a storm blew them against the cliff. Larger boats have also perished here. The storms of 1871 destroyed a hundred vessels. The coast guard now protects the boatmen from a station on Plum Island in the middle of the Door. The ferry boat is moving to the northeast, and before you lies Washington Island.

JACOBSEN: On the sand beach of Rock Island, all along the southern shore, stood the white man's [tribal?] village of three hundred souls or more. Coming in the 1830's, sailing vessels brought them down, from Chicago to establish here: Door 00:11:00County's northern town.

SCHMIDT: You examine a large scale map of the island. Close to it on the south is Detroit Island and Rock Island lies to the northeast. Around the islands on the map are clustered many white squares, identification tags for places on Washington Island. One of them reads "Indian Museum."

JACOBSEN: Often Indians would visit, they had [unintellible] their dead, now the tombstone of the paleface [unintelligible] or white man's [unintelligible].

SCHMIDT: Somewhere you remember reading that Washington Island contains more Indian relics than any other area in Wisconsin. The boat docks at Detroit Harbor, and you head for the museum. There you meet a member of the Wisconsin State Historical Society: curator of the museum, you may choose to call him. But he's more than that, because with his own hands he built it and collected the contents. And when he speaks to you proudly of Washington Island, you suspect 00:12:00that he's been here for a long time.

JACOBSEN: Well, it's going on seventy years.

SCHMIDT: Jens Jacobsen, age eighty-three.

JACOBSEN: I was born on an island that belonged to Denmark, the island Als. It was under Germany when I was born and that's how it comes -- my first school was in the German language and my folks were Danes so I learned the Danish language. And when I found out I was coming to America, well, I thought it was good to get a little of the American language.

SCHMIDT: A little of the American language is a very modest claim. Jens Jacobsen has written a history in verse of early Door County days. The verses you heard a moment ago were from a poem dealing with early settlers who came here to escape malaria.

JACOBSEN: Where Chicago now stands, that was a swamp and people that lived 00:13:00there, they simply had to get away before they got malaria. And long ago they had discovered that by coming to Rock Island they would get over it without any medicine. Those people, they came here chafing with malaria and they got over it in a remarkable short time for this climate up here is death on malaria.

SCHMIDT: The climate up here is death on malaria. Fever victims were the first to come to Door County for their health. Today, more than a hundred years later, you too may be coming here for your health. Malaria probably doesn't bother you, but hay fever is uncomfortably common these days, and pollen doesn't travel with the winds that blow from Green Bay and Lake Michigan.

JACOBSEN: On the sand beach of Rock Island, all along the southern shores, stood 00:14:00the white man's [tribal?] village of three hundred souls or more. Coming in the 1830's sailing vessels brought them down, from Chicago to establish here Door County's northern town.

SCHMIDT: You pull out the map which brought you here and above "Indian Museum" you write: Jens Jacobsen, poet, historian, archaeologist, philosopher. In the summer of 1850 a woman carried a basket of clothes to a shady spot on the Door County shoreline, build a fire under a kettle on a fireplace of rocks, boiled the clothes, and rinsed them in the clear water of Green Bay. One hundred years later another woman carried a basket of clothes to the Door County shoreline.

MRS. GROGAN: Well, anyone who has an automatic washer certainly would laugh at what I did this morning. I took the clothes and put them in the lake to soak and 00:15:00then I built a fire in a fireplace and put a washtub on top, and I filled the washtub with lake water. When it was hot I took the clothes out of the lake and put them in the hot water in the washtub. Then I have a plunger and I plunged and plunged and finally, I thought they had cooked enough. And I took them out of the tub and put them back into the lake and rinsed them and I didn't have to worry about running water because it changed continually. Then I wrung them out and hung them up, and I think the sun is going to bleach them beautifully white.

SCHMIDT: Clean clothes out of the Bay bleaching in the sun. Clean clothes by an old method, a refreshing method fostered by a refreshing point of view.

MRS. GROGAN: Well, we do go primitive here. Maybe we come up here and do it that way so that when we go home, why, we appreciate all the comforts.

SCHMIDT: In Jens Jacobson, you met the warmth of an older generation and here you found something akin to it in the generation of Mrs. Robert Grogan who comes 00:16:00from Door County to Milwaukee to wash clothes in the Bay, and to pick wild strawberries under the trees on the cliff. Out of this life comes the comfortable philosophy of relaxation.

MRS. GROGAN: You don't have to hurry; there's all day to do it and if you don't finish it today, there's always tomorrow. You just come and forget all your worries and relax and enjoy yourself and go home very much refreshed and able to meet all the problems that come in fall.

SCHMIDT: A philosophy of relaxation, an attitude nourished on air cleaned and cooled by the waters of Green Bay and Lake Michigan. You find this attitude in the younger generation, too; they don't define it but they radiate it.

ALICE LARSON: We have a crew of three, a skipper and two crew men. They have two boys for crew members; all the boats up here are skippered by girls, most of them.

SCHMIDT: How does this happen?

ALICE LARSON: Well it seems like the girls are the fortunate ones, the ones that have the boats.

SCHMIDT: Alice Larson, teenager, skipper, proud owner of several trophies. Perhaps you can sense the gleam in her eye as she describes her boat, and its suit of sails.

ALICE LARSON: Lightning is a nineteen foot knock-about sloop; it has a main, a jib, and a [unintelligible].

SCHMIDT: Alice Larson can speak of sailing with more familiarity than most because her father is a sailmaker. He learned the trade in his father's sail loft in Sweden, and he came to America in 1913.

WILLIAM LARSON: I was only supposed to come over here and see how they were doing work here but after staying here a while I liked it so well that I got married here and stayed.

SCHMIDT: William Larson worked for sailmakers on the east coast until World War II, when he joined the Navy and served in Hawaii. After the war he started his own sail loft in Sturgeon Bay. His partner in business is Lillian, his elder daughter.

LILLIAN LARSON: When daddy got back from Hawaii I got tired of working in New 00:18:00York, so came out and started working for him. This is more interesting though.

SCHMIDT: William and Lillian Larson, sailmakers and to their office come orders from all over the world.

LILLIAN LARSON: Our business comes from all over the country.

WILLIAM LARSON: I even have some of my old customers out east and I got very good customers down in Florida, and I send sails to New Orleans and I send sails out to Oregon, Washington. I have sent sails to India, to the Philippine Islands, and of course, the most of my trade is around the lakes. If anybody likes your work, I don't think it matters where you are. If they care for your workmanship, they would come to you no matter if you were up in Alaska, I think.

SCHMIDT: There are no sails on the boats that belong to the next part of our story. Sea gulls don't travel with sailboats. Instead they've learned that food is thrown from ungraceful dull gray boats of commercial fishermen. The sea gulls don't seem to mind the change of diet they've encountered during the past ten years. The sea gull is a scavenger and to him the inside of a white fish differs little from the inside of a trout. The sea gull doesn't remember the early days of lake fishing when, a man could catch fifty trout in a day using hook and line. Some forty years ago the locks opened to let a boat into the Great Lakes. With the boat came a snake like creature that attached itself to a trout, cut 00:20:00through the small scales, and began sucking out life. That was forty years ago; today -

UNIDENTIFIED: There ain't a trout left.

UNIDENTIFIED: Well, that's on account of the lamprey of course. It killed them off.

UNIDENTIFIED: Well, the government had done something about that here a few years ago and you'd have had something, you know. They waited too damn long. There ain't a trout left.

UNIDENTIFIED: Well, I don't know how they could ever wipe them out anyway, you know. They had an awful start. They came down on Lake Erie, Lake Huron you can't get a fish that's fit for market anymore hardly. All on account of the lamprey; it killed them all off.

PATTERSON: In Hibbard's Creek, in 1945, we caught 86 and in 1946, 125; in '47, 00:21:00596; in 1948, a thousand; '49, 1,600; in 1950, 5,413.

SCHMIDT: Statistics from Matt Patterson of the Conservation Department on the frightening multiplication of the lamprey eel, statistics for one eel trap in a Door County river. The multiplication will probably continue until conservation biologists can find the weak link in the lamprey's life cycle, a weak link that can be effectively attacked. The job is a tremendous one, and it'll take the cooperation of many people outside of the Conservation Department. Meanwhile, in the absence of trout, Door County fishermen are turning to the chub and the white fish. Almost as many licenses are sold now as in the days of the trout, and the catch is nearly as large, according to the statistics. But statistics can't erase the pathos in the voice of the fishermen.

UNIDENTIFIED: I'm a commercial fisherman and I've fished for about twenty-five 00:22:00years. Ever since I've started I've always fished. Years ago when I first started fishing, maybe we'd get three or four white fish in a year and now today we get all white fish and no trout. And the trout is gone, of course, because the lamprey killed them off.

SCHMIDT: With trout thinning out, the lamprey turns to other victims, less desirable ones like the thick scaled whitefish.

UNIDENTIFIED: They get on the whitefish but on account of the scale, I think it ain't as bad. You can't - you see - trout, you know, he had a small scale. Soon as you got a hold, why he could go right through, but a whitefish, you know - he gets on that scale and he's got to get that scale off before he can get in. And that ain't so easy and I suppose maybe he can't hang on that scale so good either. Oh they kill plenty of whitefish.

SCHMIDT: But even if the whitefish survives and even if the chub catch maintains the Door County fishing industry at its present healthy level, fishing will 00:23:00never be the same to the men who grew up with a trout. Fins and gills and scales make only a fish, nostalgia makes a trout.

[outdoor sounds, sounds of people]

SCHMIDT: The time is noon. They come in on a fleet of trucks. They come to eat vegetables and meat; one can't live all day on cherries. They range in age from eight to sixty. They come from many states and countries.

TENNELL: Looks like we'll have about 1400 harvest hands at the peak of our season. Then our camp will consist of about 225 Texas Mexicans made up of about 00:24:0085 families from San Antonio, Uvalde, Eagle Pass, and Laredo. We have one small group of Indians from the Flambeau Reservation, 133 Jamaicans, 200 Bahamans that are recruited throughout Wisconsin labor pool. In addition to the number already mentioned, we will have 250 sugar, beet workers from up near the Menominee and Superior sugar beet areas, and our camp now consists of about 540 white people, what we consider regulars, who come from year to year. A good many of these are from Iron Mountain, Upper Michigan, and Wisconsin points. These people also work in the factory on two shifts of about 100 on each shift.

SCHMIDT: That was Walter Tennell, chairman of the Wisconsin Cherry Commission 00:25:00and manager of the world's largest cherry orchard, Martin Brothers, near Sturgeon Bay. Here are some of the people he was talking about.

MARY: Mary [unintelligible], from Manistique, Michigan.

SCHMIDT: And who are these people with you?

MARY: My two brothers and my girl friend. [unintelligible]

SCHMIDT: And what made you decide to come here?

MARY: Oh, I liked it; I came up here last year.

SCHMIDT: What did you do last year?

MARY: I worked in the factory but I picked for one week.

SCHMIDT: What are you doing this year?

MARY: Working in the factory.

SCHMIDT: When did you come?

MARY: Saturday afternoon.

SCHMIDT: Are you all going to stay?

MARY: No. My two brothers are leaving today.

SCHMIDT: They're leaving.

MARY: Yes, they're going home.

SCHMIDT: How come?

MARY: I don't know; I guess they're lonesome. One's lovesick, I think.

SCHMIDT: Oh really. Let's talk to him and see what he's got to say for a minute. Why are you leaving?

MARY'S BROTHER: Too quiet around here.

SCHMIDT: Too quiet?

MARY'S BROTHER: Mmhmm.

SCHMIDT: Well, how's--where--

MARY: Manistique.

SCHMIDT: Manistique? How's it different?

MARY'S BROTHER: I don't know where to go up here.

SCHMIDT: Well, does it have softball games and things like that?

MARY'S BROTHER: Where?

SCHMIDT: Movies and -

MARY: Not yet.

SCHMIDT: How come you're going?

MARY'S FRIEND: Well, no-no -- I don't know anybody up here, and there's nothing to do after you're done picking cherries.

SCHMIDT: Youngsters from Michigan, families from Texas.

MR. MARTINEZ: My name is Martinez from San Antonio, Texas.

MRS. MARTINEZ: My name is Martinez; I follow him everywhere he goes. So we're just picking cherries, that's all I do. And I do the cooking, too.

MR. MARTINEZ: First we're in Rochelle, Illinois, asparagus. That's the first job, and then we come for the second job, for peas, and cherries would be the third job we do. From here we go on corn.

SCHMIDT: Asparagus, peas, cherries, corn in four different parts of the country. Which part do they like the best?

MR. MARTINEZ: Well, here's the best place. We get all the recreation we can get. 00:27:00You see, on the other fields, we don't get much recreation like we do here. We got everything here to enjoy. So the kids, they got baseball teams, any kinds of games - basketball, football, soccer balls and everything. This is the best place.

SCHMIDT: That took care of work and recreation so we asked about education. Mr. and Mrs. Martinez told us about their favorite teacher.

MRS. MARTINEZ: She teaches the kids that stay at home, that don't work.

MR. MARTINEZ: You see, over there on the spiral, you see that they have to be fourteen years old before they go to work in the fields, so the rest of the kids stay home and she teaches them. She's a nice teacher, she's nice to all the kids. All the kids like her.

SCHMIDT: Leaving home in the early spring and returning late in the fall, the children in these migratory families lose the beginning and the end of their school year.

CORTI: They start travelling from place to place in the early spring. 00:28:00They start going to different places, I would say, the first of May, or sometimes before, and when they get to a certain place, they only stay three or four weeks and then they have to move again. And sometimes when they get to a new place, the schools are closed, or almost over, and sometimes there is no place for them to attend school. And that's why they need school all year round.

SCHMIDT: And that school can only be provided through special effort. For migratory workers, a migratory teacher.

CORTI: I teach English, numbers, and also I them how to write and how to read, and how to sing and how to play together, too.

SCHMIDT: Her name is Lilia Corti.

CORTI: My home is in Mexico City.

SCHMIDT: She belongs to the Home Missions Council of North America, an organization supported by twenty-three different church denominations.

CORTI: When I finish my college in Mexico I decided to learn English. And, I did. Later I thought that I had more opportunity to serve God after I learn my English. And, one of my brothers graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. And one of his teachers told him about this kind of work. So he came, and he's been working for four summers already. And once he went back home and he told me about this work. So I got very excited, and I made plans, and I came. And this is my second, my second summer doing this work.

SCHMIDT: And this work does not consist of teaching English to citizens of Lilia 00:30:00Corti's own country. Listen to this and draw a paradox.

CORTI: Well, they are Mexicans but they were born in the United States. They are citizens of this country, and they live in Texas, most of them.

SCHMIDT: There's your paradox. A citizen of Mexico learning English in order to teach it to citizens of the United States.

[noise of machines in background]

SCHMIDT: Mechanization has moved through America into nearly every walk of life. There are a few exceptions, and the cherry industry embraces both the rule and the exception. No machine has been found to replace the human hand in the delicate job of picking cherries. But as soon as the cherry is separated from the tree, a mechanical whirlwind takes over. The sounds you hear in the 00:31:00background now are from the cherry processing plant. People are working among the machines, but their voices are submerged in the noise of metal against metal. Ninety-five percent of Door County's cherries are packed by the growers in their own plants. Or, in the plant of the fruit grower's cooperative, the largest organization of its kind in America. One of the largest private plants is in the Reynolds' orchard near Sturgeon Bay. There we talked with Don Reynolds about packing plant employees.

REYNOLDS: Well, the number of employees here, of course, varies with the rapidity with which the cherries come into the plant. On those days when we are receiving a maximum quantity of cherries per day, we run from 600 to 700 thousand pounds every 24 hours. That requires a double shift of both men and women. We will use somewheres in the neighborhood of 150 men and about 300 women 00:32:00in this plant alone. The principal use for women is in the sorting of the cherries. All of the cherries that come into the plant are sized mechanically, and then must be sorted by the human eye and the human hand, and for that work we use women. We also use them in several other jobs where the work is not heavy, such as putting cans into the runways and filling the cans, things of that nature. But the men do the heavy work.

SCHMIDT: Also, a few comments on the 1950 cherry crop.

REYNOLDS: Well the cherry crop this year is considerably better than it was last year. We do not think that it'll reach the size of the bumper crop in 1948, or perhaps even that of 1946, but it is a beautiful crop. The cherries are of excellent quality, and because of the fine rains we've had we think they're 00:33:00gonna be the finest pack that we've ever put up here in our plant in Sturgeon Bay.

[sound of machine]

SCHMIDT: That's the sound of the last machine to which the cherries are subjected in the processing plant. It's function is to put staples in crates before they are loaded on a truck. There's finality even in the sound of this machine. A teenage boy was running the machine and we asked his name. He couldn't answer. His mouth was full of cherries. If you live in Door County or if you've travelled through the miles of orchards, you can hardly imagine Door County without a cherry industry. People give little thought to the origin of things existing for a long time in large quantities, and such considerations are probably unnecessary. But they're certainly interesting. It's interesting, for example, to note that if Door County had the climate of nearly any other portion 00:34:00of the state, Wisconsin would have no cherry industry. Why?

MULLENDORE: Well, I think that the old timers would tell you that the reason why Door County was selected as an area to grow cherries and the reason why it is adapted to the growing of cherries because of the geographical location. The peninsula here is pretty well surrounded by water, and we think that in the spring of the year the effect of this water, and, of course, we have ice in the bay here, by the way, until about the middle of April many years, but it does hold back the development of our fruit and the fruit buds, so that they do not bloom, and then they're not injured by late frost.

SCHMIDT: And, your name please?

MULLENDORE: My name is G. I. Mullendore and I'm better known as Mullie. I'm the 00:35:00county and cultural agent in Door County. Been here about 14 years.

SCHMIDT: Another statement by Mr. Mullendore might indicate that the cherry industry is a bit overemphasized in Door County.

MULLENDORE: Probably, year in and year out, dairying might have it over fruit growing in terms of total income to the county.

SCHMIDT: So, in terms of Door County, the milk check is more important. But a comparison with other Wisconsin counties reveals that in total income from milk, Door County ranks 68. So, without fruit growing, Door County would be only an average agricultural community. And the fruit industry would not be here except for the climate provided by Green Bay and Lake Michigan. These waters then have been the common denominator of our soil. They formed the background for a silhouette of elements important to Door County, elements which combined to give this community a unique character. Others may choose another background and cast 00:36:00a different silhouette. But when the other stories are told, the waters will still be there with a sound belonging to the ages. Civilization adds new sounds and changes old, but the sound of water moving with the wind is forever the same, and the wind that blows from water to land is tempered by water, now, as it was in the beginning.

ANNOUNCER: This has been the Door County profile, one in a recorded series on Wisconsin's communities. Production and narration by Carl Schmidt, technical assistance by Ben Rosse, and the script was written by Les Nelson. This is the 00:37:00Wisconsin College of the Air.