The Door County Maritime Museum is pleased to offer a variety of quality, guided group tours. We design and operate our tours to provide excellent value combined with a unique maritime experience.
If you are planning a group tour to Door County, we encourage you to include the Maritime Museum in your plans. The Museum is happy to work with group tours of eight or more visitors. We’re also able to accommodate family reunions and other large groups. For more details, contact our group tour coordinator Megan Dietz at 920-743-5958 or mdietz@dcmm.org
Print or read our Group Tours Brochure.
Located along Sturgeon Bay’s working waterfront, the Door County Maritime Museum showcases the area’s rich maritime roots. Hard-working anglers, brave ship captains, and lonely lighthouse keepers are some of the personalities you’ll discover in the galleries of the Museum…Where Great Lakes maritime history comes alive!
The Jim Kress Maritime Lighthouse Tower features ten floors of interactive educational exhibits that highlight maritime history, people, and industries, and provides accessibility to a lighthouse experience that will accommodate everyone regardless of physical abilities. Plan at least 3 hours to see full museum and Tower. The museum is open daily, year-round.
Tour bus parking, ADA restrooms facility, meeting rooms, elevators.
Add the historic, restored tugboat John Purves to your Sturgeon Bay visit and enjoy an additional one-hour, docent-guided tour. Built in 1919 as the Butterfield, the John Purves has been painstakingly restored and outfitted to its 1950s heyday. Explore the entire 149-foot tug, from engine room to crew cabins, galley and wheelhouse, and get a feel for the daily life of her hard-working 13-man crew.
Authentic and glorious in her details, this vintage 1919 tug has been lovingly refinished and restored through a five-year, all-volunteer project. A few of those same volunteers serve as docents on the guided tours of the vessel. Located adjacent to the museum on the working waterfront of Sturgeon Bay. Open May 1- October 31.
There are height and mobility restrictions to safely tour the tugboat: children must be at least 38 inches tall. Tugboat is not ADA accessible.
Explore Cana Island, Door County’s most iconic lighthouse, standing watch on the shores of Lake Michigan for over 150 years. Ride a hay-wagon over the causeway to explore the island, including the 89-foot-tall light tower, oil storage house and lighthouse keeper’s home. Climb the 97 steps of the tower’s spiral staircase to enjoy the sweeping panoramic view of Lake Michigan and the Door County peninsula. Open daily May 1-October 31.
Tour bus turnaround available. Lighthouse and keeper’s quarters are not ADA accessible
The Death’s Door Maritime Museum celebrates the area’s commercial fishing tradition. Located in the village of Gills Rock at the tip of the Door County peninsula on the shores of Porte des Mortes (Death’s Door), the museum features a shipwreck and scuba diving exhibit, artifacts from the bottom of Lake Michigan, and the wooden fishing tug Hope. Open daily May 1-October 31.
Tour bus parking, EV charging station, ADA restrooms & accessibility.