Sturgeon Bay

Sturgeon Bay is the county seat of Door County and the only true city on the Door Peninsula, with a population of around 9,000. It sits at the base of the peninsula where the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal cuts a navigable passage between the bay of Green Bay and Lake Michigan, a channel that has shaped the city's maritime identity since it was completed in 1881. That canal is still active, and watching Great Lakes vessels transit through it is part of daily life in a way that reminds residents they are living on a working waterway, not just a scenic one.

Bay Shipbuilding, one of the largest shipbuilding and ship repair operations on the Great Lakes, operates on the bay side of the canal in Sturgeon Bay. It is an active industrial facility that builds and repairs vessels serving the Great Lakes commercial fleet, an economic anchor that most visitors to Door County never register because it sits alongside the galleries and wine bars without announcing itself. The maritime heritage here is not historical. It is current and employed.