Death’s Door Maritime Museum
Gills Rock, WI
Venture to the Tip of Door County
The Death’s Door Maritime Museum features the wooden fishing tug Hope and a replica net shed complete with fishing boxes, net reel and other traditional fishing supplies. The museum also includes a shipwreck and scuba diving exhibit, artifacts brought up from the bottom of Lake Michigan, and information on the area’s dangerous passage known as Death’s Door. The shipwreck area includes the story of the Great Lakes’ most famous shipwreck – the Edmund Fitzgerald – and the two men from Door County who lost their lives in that tragic sinking.
Visitors have the rare opportunity to explore – inside and out – the 45-foot wooden fishing tug Hope. It was built in 1930 by Sturgeon Bay Boat Works and owned by the well-known Stanley Voight fishing family. A video of the tug’s final fishing trip in 1992 is also part of the exhibit.
From Net To Table is a photo exhibit that profiles the people and personalities of Door County’s contemporary commercial fishing industry. Over & Back is a recently updated photography exhibit about the Washington Island Ferry Line.
Click here for admissions information or directions to the Gills Rock museum.
Death’s Door may be famous for having lent its name to both the Door Peninsula and Door County, but this strait of water that passes between Washington Island to the north and the Door Peninsula to the south is rich in maritime history and legend.
