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A Kingdom Still Delicious
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LEARN MORE AT VHDLAW.COM 10589 S Highland Rd, Ste 9 (920) 854-9977 LEARN MORE AT VHDLAW.COM LEARN MORE AT VHDLAW.COM
STURGEON BAY 1449 Green Bay Rd, Ste 8 (920) 818-1101
MILWAUKEE 310 E Buffalo St, #104 (414) 847-5655
SISTER BAY GERMANTOWN SISTER BAY 10589 S Highland Rd, Ste 9 (920) 854-9977 10589 S Highland Rd, Ste 9 (920)854-9977 GERMANTOWN SISTER BAY 10589 S Highland Rd, Ste 9 (920) 854-9977 W175N11086 Stonewood Dr (262) 250-1976 W175N11086 Stonewood Dr GERMANTOWN W175N11086 Stonewood Dr (262) 250-1976 (262)250-1976 GERMANTOWN W175N11086 Stonewood Dr
STURGEON BAY WEST BEND
STURGEON BAY 1449 Green Bay Rd, Ste 8 (920) 818-1101 1449 Green Bay Rd, Ste 8 (920)818-1101 WEST BEND STURGEON BAY 1449 Green Bay Rd, Ste 8 (920) 818-1101 246 S 5th Avenue (262) 338-8874 246 S 5th Avenue
WEST BEND 246 S 5th Avenue (262) 338-8874 (262)338-8874 WEST BEND 246 S 5th Avenue
MILWAUKEE APPLETON
MILWAUKEE 310 E Buffalo St, #104 (414) 847-5655 310 E Buffalo St, #104 (414)847-5655 APPLETON MILWAUKEE 310 E Buffalo St, #104 (414) 847-5655 4650 W Spencer St, Ste 23 (920) 560-4626 4650 W Spencer St, Ste 23
APPLETON 4650 W Spencer St, Ste 23 (920) 560-4626 (920)560-4626APPLETON 4650 W Spencer St, Ste 23
A Kingdom Still Delicious
by Dustin Renwick photos courtesy of the National Geographic Society
Tourism boomed during the 1933 cherry season, but the county had already planned to welcome visitors year-round. A new lookout tower in Potawatomi State Park opened to the public in October 1931, with the expectation of thousands of visitors as “autumn foliage is daily adding to the splendor of the view.” Although it resembled the two fire lookouts in Peninsula State Park, the Potawatomi observation tower was the first in Wisconsin designed exclusively for recreation.
Depression-era federal programs such as the Works Progress Administration landed in Door County by the end of 1933 to help build parks and improve roads. Yet locals had already funded bonds for resurfacing projects in 1930 with a clear goal, as reported by The Door County News: “Tourists are loath to travel over highways from which clouds of dust arise to obscure their vision and cover them with a coating of fine sand.” Williams provided no information for this location except “Ephraim Peninsula.”
National Geographic magazine introduced the world to Door County in a 1969 feature with a title that riffed on the centuriesold journal entries of French trader
Pierre-Esprit Radisson: “A Kingdom
So Delicious.” However, hints of the peninsula had arrived in the mailboxes of National Geographic readers decades prior. These pictures – revealed for the first time to the public at last summer’s Miller Art Museum exhibit – were made in 1933 by journalist Maynard Owen Williams.
Williams (1888-1963), the magazine’s chief foreign correspondent, visited Door County on his first domestic story assignment in 13 years. His 9,000-mile tour of the Great Lakes represented familiar territory for the global journalist who was a graduate of Kalamazoo College in Michigan.
The article was published in the April 1934 issue of the magazine, and Door County earned one photo and a passing mention in the text. Yet both the article and the unpublished archival images here avoided America’s struggles.
Williams himself had lost money in the stock market crash, and the magazine reduced his pay during subsequent
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(Top) The Fruit Growers Cooperative cannery operated 17 hours each day during full production in 1933, but Williams stopped by before the harvest began. Juicy red jewels would soon cascade onto the dimpled surface of the drums – the automatic pitters. Door County’s five factories could process 250,000 cherries every minute. This facility on the Sturgeon Bay waterfront was demolished in 1966 to make space for shipyards.
(Above) A.L. Hatch, one of the county’s founding cherry growers, declared his faith in the fruit at the turn of the 20th century: “The cherry is our long hold.” He viewed success in agricultural terms, but farm life blended with the travel industry when orchards advertised pick-your-own cherries as an option for family getaways. With cheap fruit secured, harvesters transformed into tourists, as this woman might have in Peninsula State Park.
budget cuts. But Williams described Door County’s “wonderland of forest and water” with no mention of the Great Depression.
Despite the absence in the story, residents struggled with the national turmoil while the cherry blossoms bloomed. President Franklin Roosevelt signed legislation in May 1933 that attempted to stabilize farmers’ income and reduce agricultural surpluses.
“As a result,” reported the Door County Advocate, “the three leading cherry operators of Wisconsin worked for several weeks on a plan.” Reynolds Preserving Company, Martin Orchards and the Fruit Growers Cooperative agreed to keep their prices the same. Collaboration, not competition.
The harvest began July 5, and lines of trucks from the 400 or so county growers blocked Sturgeon Bay streets every afternoon and evening.
By early August, the canning factories had packed their federal quota. Much of the rest of the estimated total crop of 16 million pounds was sold with a new method called “pick your own.” Some orchards had tested the concept in 1932, but the entire county embraced the tourists in 1933, Williams included.
Now for the first time since, visual representations of that momentous year find their way home to the kingdom that still thrives on cherries.
Orchards favored local labor during the Depression, but at least one Cherryland Special ran from Milwaukee to Sturgeon Bay in the summer of 1933. More than 200 boys and girls arrived on the train to pick for a month, similar to this group of high school girls Williams interviewed. Unemployed seasonal workers looking for agricultural jobs still arrived too, many without shoes or proper clothing, given the hardships of the year.
Look in the Door County Library branch in Sturgeon Bay to find a 1942 mural painted by city native Jessie Kalmbach Chase (1879-1970). She depicted a young woman wearing a halter top and dropping ripe cherries into a bucket while standing on an orchard ladder, its flared base obscured by the colorful trees much like the scene captured here by Williams.
Cherryland, Through and Through
by Dustin Renwick
Amonth before Maynard Owen Williams rolled into Door County on his 1933 assignment for National Geographic, some newlyweds arrived in Ephraim. Francis and Marion Färdig had moved a few days after their wedding.
However, the teaching job they expected had been reassigned to an established county resident. The couple looked for other work while they tended an orchard that Francis’ parents had begun to develop a few years prior.
The orchard thrived in the following decade and so did the Färdigs, though not in Door County. They and their daughter, Marilyn, traveled north from Illinois each summer. Marilyn sold the orchard’s fruit and vegetables at a roadside stand that her grandmother had painted with Scandinavian motifs.
Gasoline rationing and her father’s summer job in a defense plant during World War II stopped Marilyn’s visits. After the war, she returned to the peninsula and noticed a wardrobe addition: a T-shirt that displayed the agricultural pride of Door County. CHERRYLAND appeared in red above a cluster of four fruits.
“My guess would be that it was purchased in Bunda’s Department Store in Sister Bay,” she said, “but that’s just a guess. That was the main shopping place.”
As a 9-year-old at the time, she doesn’t specifically remember the origins. “But whenever I saw it in a drawer in our home in Ephraim, I recognized it as something I had owned and worn.”
The nickname “Cherryland” appeared in The Door County Advocate in 1914, but its usage likely precedes that date. The term gained validation after the 1930 census reported that Door County led the country in cherry production, and Williams referred to Cherryland in his story that published in the April 1934 issue of the magazine.
Marilyn continued her summer vacations to Door County after she married—now Färdig Whiteley—and moved to Canada in 1966. She sold the peninsula property in 2019, but she still lives about an hour from Toronto, a lifelong Great Lakes resident.
Marilyn’s name is written on an inside tag of her shirt, now in the collections of the Ephraim Historical Foundation.
Marilyn Färdig Whiteley, seen here in 1945 or 1946 with her dog, Pokey, was in charge of a roadside produce stand at her grandparents’ orchard.
