Door County
by Lucy Atkinson
While we have already looked at Door County, Wisconsin’s fascinating if stinky, traditional ‘fish boil’ (shudder!), the history of the place’s name is actually quite romantic and fascinating also!
The county is named after the Door Peninsula, which runs alongside it. The strait of ocean between this peninsula and Washington Island is apparently notorious for being a very dangerous little piece of sea. It is now ‘littered with shipwrecks’, and early French explorers gave it the gorgeous name ‘Porte des Morts Passage’, or the Door to the Way to Death … or even more simply, Death’s Door.
So, are the people of Door County the gatekeepers to Heaven and Hell?! And for you personally, if you were sent to a place that reveres fish boiling, would you be going to heaven or hell? An interesting addendum to the idea of the county being a sort of purgatory is that physically, it actually has very thin soil … in up to 40% of the county, there is less than three feet of digging before you get to the bedrock. Lucky that ocean trade is thriving here, because horticulture would not be an easy task under these conditions.
As such, the population has increased very little in the last hundred or so years – from around 17,000 in the 1900 census, to around 27,000 in the 2000 census. This has made it a popular tourist destination, because of the relative quiet of the area compared to the cities. Despite the wonderfully provocative name though, Door County is famous for quite mundane things … boating, fishing, hiking, ice cream, golfing and go karts are listed as some of the main attractions. Nothing like ‘Meet Your Maker at Death’s Door County!’, or even ‘Will You Be Going to Heaven or Hell … Find Out in Door County this Summer!’.
I also recently discovered that the Door County fish boils are actually so popular they are offered in local restaurants, year round … not only as a ceremonial event. Hmmm…
Photo credits: Nelson Point sunset by James Jordan
