12 minute read
Changing the Message
by Myles Dannhausen Jr.
Destination Door County board member Jeff Lutsey and volunteer Mary Spittel collect trash in 2021. Photo by Yvonne Torres.
In March of 2020, as restrictions spread across the country in the wake of the threat presented by COVID-19, residents of Door County noticed one impact immediately: They had a lot more neighbors.
Hundreds of seasonal residents flocked to Door County that March and April to wait out what most expected to be a weeks- or monthslong upheaval. They were followed in June by an influx of visitors flocking to the peninsula seeking its open spaces, and many came for the first time. Long lines of cars at state parks, waiting lists for campsites and overflowing garbage cans took a toll on municipal budgets and the patience of residents.
But the tourism backlash had started to heat up before the word “coronavirus” became ubiquitous. At Destination Door County (DDC), marketing director Michelle Rasmussen had begun hearing increasing rumblings from residents and business owners for a year or more prior, inspiring a shift in strategy at the organization from purely destination marketing to destination management. In 2019, DDC entered into a partnership with the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics to formulate the Door County Leave No Trace 7 Principles. (See those at doorcounty.com/care-for-doorcounty/leave-no-trace). A year ago, DDC launched the Door County Pledge, and then it initiated the Care for Door County program to expand visitors’ “understanding of the county and help them realize the role they play in keeping it the special place it is.”
Morgan Rusnak now leads the organization’s Care for Door County outreach efforts, and she said the
program has evolved since its launch in April 2021.
It’s also about painting a picture to – hopefully – attract the type of visitor who respects the county’s environment and the people who live here. It’s no longer a broad message trying to persuade everyone to come discover Door County.
The program launched with a large public-relations push that Rusnak admitted gave some the impression that it was simply a marketing gimmick, but she has a well-rounded perspective on the effort. She came to the county from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, nine years ago to wait tables and now represents her district in the City of Sturgeon Bay on the Door County Board of Supervisors.
“There was a bit of a ‘What now?’ feeling” after the program launch, she said.
During the year since, however, DDC has taken more of a handson approach. For Leave No Trace Tuesdays, Rusnak has organized cleanup events throughout the county during which DDC staff and community volunteers pick up trash on roadsides and at county parks. Staff who are stationed at information booths at festivals
(Top) Destination Door County staff members pick up roadside trash during a 2021 Leave No Trace Tuesday event.
(Above) Volunteers pitch in at a Leave No Trace cleanup event at Sunset Park. Photos by Yvonne Torres.
Destination Door County staff members (from left) Pat Nash, Laura Bradley and Jen Rogers took the Leave No Trace message on the road to learn from locals and visitors at the Northport ferry dock. Photo by Jon Jarosh.
and high-traffic areas such as the Northport ferry dock and Cave Point also talk to vacationers and residents about the pledge and gather feedback.
Lodging revenue jumped 40% in 2021 compared to 2019, boosted by a surge of new visitors. It wasn’t just new visitors, but a change in the habits of longtime visitors and residents that put the microscope on marketing efforts. People flocked to the water, to the parks, to the beach, crowding spaces that some had once had to themselves and putting pressure on the places residents treasure most.
As DDC continues its evolution into destination management, Rusnak said the next challenge is putting structure to the effort, and she’s excited about what’s possible.
“We’re starting to support nonprofits in ways we haven’t in the past,” she said. “It’s continuing Leave No Trace Tuesdays, but also promoting inclusivity in tourism: the We Welcome All message. Though we can’t build housing, we can be a part of the conversation, and we can show up at meetings and be advocates for it.” Rusnak said many of these changes have come from being listeners rather than directors, as part of a shift from being a membershipdriven organization to a partnershipdriven organization.
“If we’re going to get it right, it can’t be top down. It has to be authentic, and it has to be real,” she said. “For our neighbors, our stakeholders, our community members, we will be a better resource for them as well. We can be pushing their missions forward. That makes the community a happier place, a healthier place.”
Wisconsin’s First Lady of Conservation
Emma Toft
by Patty Williamson, PhD
In Norbert Blei’s tribute to Emma Toft in his 1981 book, Door Way, he noted that she was a “legend, bordering on myth.” A piece by Roy Lukes, written after Toft’s death on Valentine’s Day 1982 at the age of 91, described her as “Wisconsin’s first lady of conservation … who influenced people throughout the state, as well as visitors from other states and foreign countries.”
Today “Miss Emma” is revered as the savior of Toft Point, her family’s original home. She spent a lifetime protecting the 325-acre ancient forest (now 740 protected acres), first from loggers and later from developers who wanted to turn it into an expensive, exclusive resort.
Because of her determination, Toft Point remains today much as it was a thousand years ago. In 1967, it was sold to the Wisconsin Nature Conservancy, which turned it over to the University of Wisconsin System for research and public enjoyment.
Toft was a strong, independent woman at a time when strength and independence were not always viewed as desirable traits in women. She was known to enforce at gunpoint her rule about not interfering with the flora and fauna at Toft Point, and at least one Baileys Harbor resident remembers that the gun also came out when uninvited visitors breached the hedge in front of her village home.
Toft was also one of the primary forces behind the formation of The Ridges Sanctuary. Can you imagine Baileys Harbor with a trailer park on that site? That was the plan during the mid-1930s until she stepped in.
Toft, along with Jens Jensen, founder of The Clearing; Baileys Harbor resident Olivia Traven; and Albert Fuller, curator of botany at the Milwaukee Public Museum, founded The Ridges in 1937. It was the first land trust in Wisconsin, became a National Natural Landmark, and in 1967, was designated as a World Heritage Site. It now encompasses 1,600 acres.
Toft was a person without pretense, completely committed to her vision of preserving the land, plants and wildlife in their natural state. She was known for befriending and bottle-feeding orphaned fawns at Toft Point, a sight memorialized in a Baileys Harbor mural. Blei remembered that “though she smiled, spoke softly, possessed refinement enough to be a member of any Door County social set, she appeared at a dinner at the yacht club dressed in blue denim, work shoes and a red bandana. She was the most striking old woman I’d ever seen.”
Toft was not shy about standing up for what she believed. Longtime friend Roy Lukes saw evidence of this on many occasions, but very memorably at a banquet with Patrick Lucey, Wisconsin’s governor in the 1970s, when Emma was in her eighties. Lucey wanted to straighten the beautiful winding road from Gills Rock to Northport – an idea Toft fought.
“When it was her turn to greet the governor,” Lukes said, “she grabbed his hand so tightly that, so help me, I think he winced. She pointed her other hand right at his nose and said, ‘Governor, don’t you dare let them straighten that road to Northport.’ Lucey said something like, ‘I’ve heard about you, Emma Toft.’ The road never got straightened.”
Photo by Frank Pechman.
Nature First
Jens Jensen
by Patty Williamson, PhD
Photo courtesy of The Clearing.
Jens Jensen had already made his mark long before he became a force for nature and preservation in Door County. The Danishborn landscape architect played a prominent role in creating a uniquely North American landscape design – the Prairie Style – working with indigenous plants and incorporating such features as council rings and wetland gardens known as “prairie rivers.”
As superintendent of Chicago’s west park district, he helped to design Humboldt, Garfield, Columbus and several other parks, and he worked to establish the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.
But then his eyes turned northward. In 1919, Jensen had acquired property for a vacation home on 128 acres near Ellison Bay. At age 75 in 1935, he moved there permanently to establish The Clearing, his “school of the soil,” with a curriculum that was a holistic mix of ecology, horticulture, philosophy and the arts.
Instruction at The Clearing was noncompetitive – no credits, no grades, no degrees, no pitting of one student against another – and he incorporated a method of teaching that the Danes called The Living Word: a combination of learning, history, tradition, social interaction and quiet reflection with an emphasis on discussion, conversation, nature study and hands-on work.
The Clearing evolved into a folk school with Jensen’s vision at its center, and more than a century after he bought it, the landscape looks very much as it did then. In Door County, Jensen found Emma Toft, the person who shared his deepest feelings about the spiritual power of nature and the need to protect and preserve it. Jensen would say, “She’d make those Swedish pancakes with chopped apples and nutmeg and butter, and I’d stay there for a long time. And oh, boy, we’d talk about all sorts of ways that we would improve society.”
Along with Toft, Olivia Traven and Albert Fuller, Jensen was a founder of The Ridges Sanctuary in Baileys Harbor and influenced the preservation and design of natural spaces throughout the peninsula.
Today he is considered by many to be the most important American landscape architect, and The Clearing his greatest work.
The Father of Peninsula State Park
Thomas Reynolds
by Patty Williamson, PhD
Some of the most beautiful views and shoreline in Door County lie between Ephraim and Fish Creek: 3,776 acres of open, public land known as Peninsula State Park. But if it weren’t for the work of Thomas Reynolds, it might long ago have been parceled off into private estates.
Reynolds was born in County Longford, Ireland, on St. Patrick’s Day 1840 or 1841. At 26, he left Ireland because of his involvement in a plot to incite an Irish revolt against British rule, and he eventually settled in Jacksonport, where he became a successful farmer.
By 1870, he was a Jacksonport town supervisor, and he was elected to the state Assembly in 1906. It was good timing because in 1907, Wisconsin established the State Park Board. One of its first tasks was finding a location for a state park in northeastern Wisconsin.
In May 1908, the board visited Door County, where town chairs in the county had been asked to suggest possible tracts and prices. Baileys Harbor and Jacksonport offered the state more than 1,000 acres spanning the shores of Kangaroo Lake and Lake Michigan, and other proposed locations were at Clark Lake, Ellison Bay, Gills Rock, Europe Bay and two sites near Fish Creek.
Reynolds encouraged a large group of politicians to join the expedition, along with John Nolan, a noted landscape architect from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who had been hired to advise them. Nolan recommended three locations, and one of them was the peninsula overlooking Green Bay between Fish Creek and Ephraim.
Reynolds’ efforts during his second term in office were concentrated on securing the vote of the Assembly for the site that eventually became Peninsula State Park. The price of the park’s 3,776 acres was $75,000.
He had opponents, including the Green Bay Press Gazette and H.R. Holand, among others, but Reynolds was persuasive in his pleas. “Let the state of Wisconsin give to its children this vast playground, where the old, and tired, and worn may grow young in spirit and rested in body, mused by the purity of nature’s medicine, and where the young may romp and their bodies grow strong among the wonders of scenic beauty.”
Thomas died at home on Jan. 11, 1919, and the state Assembly approved a resolution honoring him as the Father of Peninsula State Park.
Photo from the Blue Book of the State of Wisconsin, 1909.
