Rock Island

If you’re not a sailor, the usual route to Rock Island starts with a drive north on Wisconsin Highway 42 to the tip of the Door County peninsula.  There you can take a car ferry from Northport to Washington Island.  Then you have to drive, ride or take a taxi from Detroit Harbor, on the southwest side of the island, to Jackson Harbor, on the northeast side.  There you can take a ferry — no cars or bikes, just people and their gear — to Rock Island State Park.

Its limited accessibility may lead you to think that Rock Island has always been a wilderness and never a home to anyone.  But, you’d be wrong.  Evidence of human activity on Rock Island dates back 10,000 years or more.  The Chippewa and the Potawatomi were some of the Native Americans to occupy the island.  The French explorer Jean Nicolet is thought to have stopped there in 1634 and a fishing village occupied the island in the 19th century.  A lighthouse was built on Rock Island in 1836 to assist navigation through the treacherous waters in this part of the Great Lakes.

Rock Island boat house

The most obvious sign of past occupation to current visitors is the huge rock boathouse constructed by Chester Thordarson. Thordarson, the inventor of transformers and other electrical transmission devices, owned most of the island from 1910 to 1965, when his heirs sold it to the state of Wisconsin.  Be sure to explore the water level boat house under the building as well as the museum that now occupies the large upstairs room offering beautiful views of the lake.

Don’t forget to bring your hiking boots along because there are many trails on the island including the 5.2 mile Thordarson trail that follows the circumference of the island.  Here you can see the Pottawatomie Lighthouse, the oldest in Wisconsin, as well as a cemetery and cliffs of Niagara dolomite rising over 100 feet above the water.  You can also relax and swim on the sandy beach on the north side of the island.

If you’re interested, you can find a history of the island in Conan Bryant Eaton’s book Rock Island.  Or, for more about Chester Thordarson, check out Thordarson and Rock Island, by Richard Purinton.

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