In celebration of a record-setting 2025, YOUR Door County Maritime Museum is pleased and excited to host a Community Appreciation Event on Friday and Saturday, April 3-4, 2026.
The Community Appreciation Event will offer free admission for everyone to DCMM-Sturgeon Bay, open 10am-4pm both days. There will be activities and special treats for children from the DCMM Education Department, and a sneak-peak into the Peterson Gallery, currently under complete renovation.
The new Peterson Gallery will include a Special Exhibit Space for temporary and traveling exhibitions, Young Mariners interactive exhibits for our younger visitors, while preserving and highlighting the submarine periscope and the original Safeway shipping container from Leathem D. Smith.
The three other legacy galleries of the Sturgeon Bay museum – along with the Jim Kress Maritime Lighthouse Tower – are all open and ready for your visit! The DCMM Community Appreciation Event will also provide Death’s Door Mariner’s Store discounts and sales, and discounts on new DCMM Memberships.
In 2025, DCMM attendance revenue broke the $1 Million mark for the first time ever; Death’s Door Mariner’s Store sales topped $460,000; AND our generous maritime community contributed more than $1.4 Million in project-specific and general operations funding to the organization! DCMM and Destination Sturgeon Bay hosted an amazing Tall Ships event! Cana Island Lighthouse welcomed more than 65,000 guests during the six-month season, May-October (even after being closed for three full days in August due to the summer storm). Most importantly, DCMM purchased a new off-site collections storage and archives facility at 512 South Columbia Street, Sturgeon Bay.
The DCMM Community Appreciation Event is a small way of expressing gratitude and saying THANK YOU for the support from our amazing maritime community. The weekend events are generously sponsored by Mike and Terry Wickman