Washington Island is an island of the state of

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

situated in

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...

. Lying about northeast of the tip of the

Door Peninsula The Door Peninsula is a peninsula in eastern Wisconsin, separating the southern part of the Green Bay from Lake Michigan. The peninsula includes northern Kewaunee County, northeastern Brown County, and the mainland portion of Door Co ...

, it is part of Door County, Wisconsin. The island has a year-round population of 708 people according to the 2010 census. It has a land area of 60.89 km² (23.51 sq mi) and comprises over 92 percent of the land area of the town of

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, as well as all of its population. The unincorporated community of Detroit Harbor is situated on the island. It is the largest in a group of islands that includes

Plum A plum is a fruit of some species in ''Prunus'' subg. ''Prunus'.'' Dried plums are called prunes. History Plums may have been one of the first fruits domesticated by humans. Three of the most abundantly cultivated species are not found ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

, Hog, Pilot,

Fish Fish are Aquatic animal, aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack Limb (anatomy), limbs with Digit (anatomy), digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as we ...

, and

Rock Islands The Rock Islands of Palau, also called ''Chelbacheb'', are a collection of several hundred small limestone or coral uprises in the Southern Lagoon of Palau between Koror and Peleliu, now an incorporated part of Koror State. There are between 25 ...

. These islands form the Town of Washington. Detroit Harbor bay is on the south side of the island. A large part of Washington Island's

economy An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...

is based on

tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...

. Washington Island is approximately wide by long. Together with the Door Peninsula, Washington Island forms a treacherous

strait A strait is an oceanic landform connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The surface water generally flows at the same elevation on both sides and through the strait in either direction. Most commonly, it is a narrow ocean chan ...

that connects Green Bay to the rest of

. Early French explorers named this water way, now littered with

shipwreck A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. Angela Croome reported in January 1999 that there were approximately ...

s, ''

Porte des Morts Porte des Morts, also known as Porte des Mortes, the Door of Death, and Death's Door is a strait linking Lake Michigan and Green Bay between the northern tip of the Door Peninsula and the southernmost of the Potawatomi Islands. At its narrowe ...

'', which literally means "Door of the Dead" or, more colloquially, "Death's Door", giving both Door County and Door Peninsula their names.

History

Washington Island is one of a string of islands (which are an outcropping of the

Niagara Escarpment The Niagara Escarpment is a long escarpment, or cuesta, in Canada and the United States that runs predominantly east–west from New York through Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and into Illinois. The escarpment is most famous as the cliff ove ...

) stretching across the entrance of Green Bay from the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin to the Garden Peninsula in

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...

. One early name is "Wassekiganeso," an

Ojibwa The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...

name that translates to "his breast is shining" and apparently refers to the glint of the sun that at times reflects off the

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms w ...

cliffs. Another Native American name is "Me-she-ne-mah-ke-ming" or "Leader Island". The earliest records and maps of the French, with whom written history of the region begins, do not name the individual islands, but refer to them all as a group. The names chosen depended on which group of Native Americans they found on the islands at the time. The most common name from after 1650 to 1816 was the

Potawatomi Islands The Potawatomi Islands is the most common historic name given to the string of islands that delineate the transition from Green Bay to Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes. The archipelago is also termed the "Grand Traverse Islands". The large ...

. The

Potawatomi The Potawatomi , also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie (among many variations), are a Native American people of the western Great Lakes region, upper Mississippi River and Great Plains. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a m ...

appear to have first come to especially the southern islands in the string about 1641 (at which time they may figure into the naming of ''

''), then left the area for a while, and then returned again and remained there for a considerable length of time. The French form of this name (also variously spelled) is ''l'Isle des Poux'', based on a shortened form of the tribe's name. This shortened form also appears as "Pous" and is at times erroneously confused with ''Puans'', which refers to the Winnebago. At times the French used the latter portion of the tribe's name, "Pou_a louse", resulting in Louse Islands. Before 1800, however, a few other names were applied to these islands. The Jesuit Records of 1670–1672 refer to them as the Huron Islands. Other records of the time refer to them as the Noquet Islands, named for the small band of Ojibwa that lived in the area of what is now called

Big Bay de Noc Big Bay de Noc is a bay in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The bay, which opens into Lake Michigan's Green Bay, is enclosed by Delta County. The Garden Peninsula is on the east side of the bay and the Stonington Peninsula i ...

, as well as, for a time, on Washington Island. Jonathan Carver, who traveled the area in the late 18th century, called them, simply, the Islands of the Grand Traverse. In July 1816, Col. John Miller garrisoned a new fort at the head of Green Bay to be called Fort Howard. Three

schooners A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoo ...

and one

sloop A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...

sailed from Mackinac. They were the sloop ''Amelia'' and the schooners ''Wayne'', ''Mink'', and ''Washington'', the last being the largest and flagship of the fleet, as well as, reportedly, the largest vessel on the lakes at the time. The fleet was separated ''en route'', and the ''Washington'' anchored in what is now Washington Harbor to wait for the others. With two days of waiting, some of the crew explored the island, and the officers, assuming theirs was the first ship to anchor there, named the harbor after the ship and in honor of

President Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of t ...

. They also named various islands in the area after significant members of their party, with the name of Col. John Miller being honored on the largest island as Millers Island. Other members of the party included Maj. Talbot Chambers, John O'Fallon, and Joseph Kean. Chambers Island retains its name today, while Keans Island and Fallons Island are now called Rock and Detroit Islands, respectively. Washington Island Panorama

Not every map maker or journalist, however, knew of or paid attention to this. The names of Potawatomi and Louse continued to be used by many for many years, with a continued variety of spellings. At times Potawatomi was applied to the main island; sometimes to what is now Rock Island. At times the main island was missing from the map. When the lighthouse was built on Rock Island, it was called Pottawatomie Light, the name it has retained. While a few maps did chart either llens or Mellens Island (a possible corruption of Miller), the settlement of the island began with the fishers and craftsmen living around Washington Harbor. A large non-Native American presence did not begin until the 1830s, when settlers on their way to Green Bay heard of large sized trout. Most of these settlers were

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its ...

ic and Irish. These settlers commonly called the whole island by the name of their harbor and in the census of 1850, "Washington Island" appeared. The border between Wisconsin and Michigan was originally defined as "the most usual ship channel" into Green Bay from

but commercial routes existed both to the north and south of the island which led to a border dispute. In 1936, the U.S. Supreme Court decision ''

Wisconsin v. Michigan Two Supreme Court cases, ''Wisconsin v. Michigan'', 295 U.S. 455 (1935) and ''Wisconsin v. Michigan'', 297 U.S. 547 (1936), settled a territorial dispute between Wisconsin and Michigan. Background The 1836 boundary description between Wiscons ...

'' found that Washington and other nearby islands were part of Wisconsin.

Culture

A majority of the people who settled on the island were Scandinavian

immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, ...

s, especially

ers. Today, Washington Island is one of the oldest Icelandic communities in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

and among the largest outside Iceland itself. Because of a loophole exploited during

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholi ...

by the owner of Nelsen's Hall (one of the few bars on the island at the time), taking shots of

Angostura Bitters Angostura bitters () is a concentrated bitters (herbal alcoholic preparation) based on gentian, herbs, and spices, by House of Angostura in Trinidad and Tobago. It is typically used for flavouring beverages or, less often, food. The bitters we ...

is a local tradition. Washington Island's population consumes more bitters than anyone else in the world. From 1896 to 1926, the economist

Thorstein Veblen Thorstein Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism. In his best-known book, ''The Theory of the Leisure Class'' ...

spent summers at his study cabin on Washington Island. On the island he learned Icelandic, which allowed him to write articles accepted by an Icelandic newspaper and translate the '' Laxdæla saga'' into English. In 1914, Washington Island was the setting for a juvenile fiction novel by Harry Lincoln Sayler under the pen name "Gordon Stuart".

Modern day

Washington Island hosts the Midwest region's largest lavender farm, accompanied by a biennial festival held in summer. Two town parks, one county park, two town beaches, one public boat ramp, and three State Natural Areas dot the island. A fine arts school, the Sievers School of Fiber Arts, also calls the island home. There is one commercial fisherman on the island.

Climate

Washington Island has a

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freez ...

influenced to some degree by its offshore position in

. This results in summer temperatures being moderated,

seasonal lag Seasonal lag is the phenomenon whereby the date of maximum average air temperature at a geographical location on a planet is delayed until some time after the date of maximum insolation (i.e. the summer solstice). This also applies to the mini ...

being prevalent and winters being less cold than in western Wisconsin on the same latitude.

Transportation

Washington Island is served by two ferry routes. The first route is to take a 30-minute

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water ta ...

ride from the Door Peninsula to Detroit Harbor on the island from a freight, automobile, and passenger ferry that departs daily from the Northport Pier at the northern terminus of Wisconsin Highway 42. The second route is a passenger-only ferry that departs from the unincorporated community of Gills Rock on a 20-minute route, which includes an optional bundled narrated train tour upon arriving on Washington Island. The Washington Island Airport, a small public airport with two grass runways, is located on the island.

History

Culture

Modern day

Climate

Transportation

Gallery

See also

References

External links