Growing up in Poland, Krzysztof Krol loved pierogi. But he had no idea that the dumplings would be such a hit in Door County, in northeast Wisconsin. “There are 10 Polish speakers in the whole region,” he tells me. “Still, on our first day [of business], we sold out by 2 p.m.”
That was five years ago, when Krol, now 34, opened his food stand, Prince of Pierogi, in the village of Ephraim, near Peninsula State Park. Today we’re sitting in his second brick-and-mortar restaurant in the town of Sturgeon Bay, where he employs a team to fill dough with meat, cheese, and potatoes and hand-pinch their frilled edges. “You know who works for me? A couple of 70-year-old ladies. They’re looking to stay active, and they’re amazing.”
Retirees are not an anomaly in Door County. A quiet peninsula geographically isolated from the rest of the state, it sticks up into Lake Michigan like a thumb, roughly 150 miles from Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s biggest city. It has just 30,500 permanent residents, but every summer, 2.5 million holidaymakers swell that number, the vast majority coming from Chicago or cities in Wisconsin.
Among Door County’s attractions are tree-lined beaches, quaint small towns, and picturesque orchards that produce nearly all the sour cherries in Wisconsin. Its five state parks—more than in any other county in the state—include Newport, the second Dark Sky Park designated in the Midwest; there are also 34 islands and 11 historic lighthouses. Owing to these charms, Door County is often called the “Cape Cod of the Midwest.”
Krol first visited the area on a work and travel cultural exchange program in 2012, starting as a housekeeper, then bagging groceries, waiting tables, and serving ice cream. “Coming here for the first time I just knew, you have to make this your second home,” he says. “It’s secluded, it’s different, and the nature is world-class.”
Pierogi and a cabbage roll at Prince of Pierogi; Sister Bay
Photos by Christina Holmes
I had my reasons for visiting Wisconsin, too. I suspect few Brits like me would be able to point to it on a map, but I knew exactly where it was: I had visited 42 states and was on a mission to reach the rest. Aware that Wisconsin is America’s Dairyland, I pictured long drives through gentle farmland and visits to conservative communities.
When I heard about Door County, it was the promise of its beauty that most appealed to me. Here, I thought, was far more natural diversity than I expected of the Midwest. There were rumors, too, from friends who had been there, of another kind of diversity. Young people moving to the area. LGBTQ pride flags in the streets. Intrigued, I flew to Milwaukee from London and drove three hours north, the shore of Lake Michigan hovering in and out of view.
With a population of 10,000, Sturgeon Bay is Door County’s largest town, and the gateway to the region. I head across its sweeping harbor bridge, past lines of boats, to reach the downtown. I pass art galleries, candy stores with red-and-white-striped awnings, shop fronts filled with soaps and fancy kitchenware. But there are hints of something a little less traditional. A bookseller promotes banned books you won’t find in the state’s schools and libraries. A 19th-century chapel has been converted into an eatery and wine bar.
Later that evening, I walk into that wine bar, Drömhus, to meet Cathy Grier. A blues musician who grew up in Connecticut, Grier spent the mid-1980s gigging in Key West and the aughts busking in New York City. A songwriting gig brought her to Sturgeon Bay in 2016, and she was taken by the thriving arts scene, from a recording studio run by a Grammy-nominated producer to a progressive theater company operating in of a state park.
What she didn’t find was a visible LGBTQ community. “People didn’t share their lives publicly. Some felt they were safer keeping their lives private,” she says. “But I didn’t want to be in the closet. I couldn’t live here if I couldn’t be normal.” In 2016 she set up Open Door Pride, which runs year-round events. Grier remains in awe of the support she receives for her Pride Festival, which takes place each June. “I’ve never lived anywhere like it,” she says. “If you ask for help, people always show up.”
Her friend Claudia Scimeca says that’s just what’s known around here as “Midwest kind.” “We look at people on the street and we’re not uncomfortable greeting them. We smile a lot. We also apologize for a lot of things.” I tell Scimeca that last part is a British trait, too. “Oh is it?” she says. “I’m sorry.”
Ellison Bay has a population of about 250 people.
Photo by Christina Holmes
Dinner at Earl’s Sister Bay Bowl; Skyway Drive-in Theatre in Fish Creek has been open every summer since 1950.
Photos by Christina Holmes
Nowhere is more than an hour-and-a-half drive in Door County—if it were, you’d be in the water. At the end of the night I leave the wine bar and head 30 miles north to Sister Bay. I’m staying at the Dörr hotel, where Scandinavian-minimalist interiors reflect the new spirit afoot.
The next morning, I visit Peninsula State Park on a promontory a few miles south—a peninsula on a peninsula. Krol had recommended it the day before, and I quickly see why. As I wind cautiously around its perimeter road, a doe bolts out of the undergrowth. A few seconds later, her baby follows, rushing to catch up and tripping over its feet so its limbs splay every which way.
I like the park even more when I discover its clifftop lookout, Eagle Tower. A recent rebuild is the third iteration of the observation platform that has stood here since 1914, now with a canopy walk as an accessible alternative to its 100 steps. I look and see the waters of Lake Michigan stretching out before me, waves lapping gently against the shoreline.
What I don’t see—anywhere—are many chain hotels, billboards, or large lakeside developments. Door County has insulated itself from mass commercialization for decades, a big part of its appeal. Its small-town Americana charm is encapsulated in Ephraim, which I reach in a few minutes’ drive from the park. The signage on Wilson’s Restaurant & Ice Cream Parlor still advertises fountain service like it’s a novelty.
But the white churches and Hallmark movie aesthetic isn’t the only story here. There are new faces, and new enterprises, coming to town. I saunter along the road to a run of microbusinesses operating out of what were once holiday chalets. At Anatolia Cuisine DC, Mukhtar Aghazada offers falafel and kofta, the kinds of dishes his family serves at their own restaurants back home in Azerbaijan. In 2024, his restaurant’s first year, Aghazada was so busy that for three months he couldn’t even take time off to get a haircut. “I had to ask my girlfriend,” he says, running his hand over his head. “It wasn’t that good.”
Amy and Eric Gale of Anchored Roots Vineyard & Winery; Rusty Dusty Vintage & Records sells antiques and collectibles.
Photos by Christina Holmes
We sit in the tiny dining room, eating fragrant, sticky baklava and washing it down with tea. Aghazada came to Fish Creek on a cultural exchange program and stayed to study for an MBA at Illinois State University. It was Krol who originally told him the unit near his Ephraim shop was becoming available.
Steps away at Rusty Dusty Vintage & Records, Adam Pokorski also moved to the area to start a new business. A portrait of Greta Thunberg hangs on the outside wall; inside, eclectic wares—T-shirts, vinyl, VHS tapes—are arranged with Pokorski’s own memorabilia along the timber walls. He is originally from Green Bay but lived most of his adult life in Northern California before his wife suggested they move here, which they did in 2017.
As I travel around the county I meet others with similar stories. There’s Mattea Fischer, whose sourdough bakery Cultured attracts an 8 a.m. line for bagels and focaccia. Fischer grew up in Pennsylvania and had been working on an urban farm in Milwaukee and rural farms outside of Green Bay before a friend introduced her to Door County; she opened a permanent home for her bakery, previously a pop-up, in 2023. Sourdough is also a key ingredient at Inland, a pizza shop opened by two couples in Baileys Harbor in September 2024.
Then there’s Ben Joseph: He quit life as a lawyer to open Zeke’s Village Market in Sister Bay. I meet Joseph in the indie-shopping hub of Fish Creek, where his new store sells funky Wisconsin-themed apparel. (My purchase: a yellow sweater emblazoned with the word “Cheese.”)
Eric and Amy Gale, both in their 30s, returned home to Wisconsin in 2020 and planted their first vineyard before opening Anchored Roots winery in 2022. One afternoon, I visit their tasting room, turning away from the water to the farmland that makes up much of the peninsula’s interior. The first bottle I try is their ledge blanc, a mineral-y, melony white that reminds me a little of a sauvignon blanc, which it’s not. It’s made from a blend of hardy grapes—itasca, frontenac, and la crescent—bred for cold climates by the University of Minnesota and still relatively unknown.
Eric follows it with a more experimental pour, a frontenac blanc that balances the grape’s bracing acidity with a creamy oak finish. (Even Eric describes it as “totally outside the box.”) He and Amy met at college in De Pere, Wisconsin, then spent years working in viticulture in Washington State. “We could have continued to make great cabernet sauvignon and riesling out there,” he says. Instead, the couple preferred to help build Wisconsin winemaking from the ground up.
Seaquist Orchards in Sister Bay
Photo by Christina Holmes
The industry here is still very young—“probably where Washington was in the 1970s,” Eric says—but the Gales are determined to help bolster its reputation. While many winemakers opt for warmer, sunnier climates, it was Door County’s comparative coolness that appealed. The lake acts as a climate buffer, meaning spring comes late, so there’s less chance of unexpected damaging frosts. And as climate change brings more erratic and extreme weather, the vineyard is well positioned.
I get a taste of the peninsula’s unique topography the next day as I drive 10 miles south from Sister Bay to Baileys Harbor. The vegetation seems to come in waves: banks of trees, explosions of balsam fir and white spruce, sudden marsh. My journey ends at the Ridges Sanctuary, a private, not-for-profit nature reserve created in 1937 to protect Door County’s most sensitive ecosystem. The first site in Wisconsin to be dedicated as a National Natural Landmark, its programs extend from guided hikes and kids camps to volunteer conservation work.
Katie Krouse, the first woman executive director in the sanctuary’s history, takes me around its five-plus-mile trail, pointing out some of the endangered species surviving here: pink-veined orchids, Hine’s emerald dragonflies. We pause to take in various scents, from the spreading skirts of the Canadian hemlock to the wintergreen and juniper we’re crushing underfoot. This boreal forest—the southernmost in North America—is one of the most biologically diverse habitats in the entire Midwest.
But the warming climate is already having an impact on it. Ash trees and white birch are dying off as rising temperatures make them vulnerable to both extreme weather and invasive species. The sanctuary is engaged in critical research to learn how best to preserve the environment, whether that’s planting more trees or identifying the ideal conditions for a ram’s-head lady’s slipper orchid. “The landscape is going to change significantly,” says Krouse, who points out that as temperatures rise farther south, Door County will also attract an increasing population of climate migrants. “And that puts a lot of pressure on the environment.”
“In a sad way,” says Jeff Lutsey, climate change will only make Door County more popular, because it will make the summers longer and the seasons won’t be as hot as other destinations. In 2022, Lutsey was named the first salaried director of the Climate Change Coalition of Door County, which advises local businesses on everything from tree planting to energy-efficient construction. His team is working on building greater resilience around the county, both in its economy and its infrastructure. It’s in this context that he suggests I visit Jeannie Kokes, 82, who runs one of the oldest hotels on Washington Island.
Door County’s largest island sits off the tip of the peninsula and measures just 35 square miles. Every local I meet speaks fondly of it: “It’s like a vacation from your vacation,” Lutsey says. “You think coming to Door County is going back in time? In Washington Island it feels like they only just got cars.”
More than a million people a year visit Cave Point County Park to see its limestone ledges and underwater caves; besides bowling, Earl’s Sister Bay Bowl is known for its old-fashioneds and fish fry.
Photos by Christina Holmes
And so, on the final day of my trip, I take the cartoonishly winding road north to the ferry pier. The half-hour crossing is windy but smooth, for which I’m grateful. A fellow passenger tells me that so many ships were wrecked in this navigational passage during the 17th and 18th centuries that they still call it Death’s Door.
Kokes, an energetic force bundled in a windbreaker, meets me on the other side, with a plan to drive me around and introduce me to a few of the local residents. (There are only 780 in total.) Kokes’s own grandparents were regular visitors to the island from the 1920s and first brought her here when she was a baby. In 2014, after being widowed, she bought the eight-bedroom Hotel Washington with a vision of what it, and she, could do for the community. (The hotel still has shared bathrooms, though they’re more well-appointed today.) Her first innovation was the farm-to-table restaurant with seasonal menus that showcase island products; in 2017 she helped set up Gathering Ground, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable agriculture through its incubator farm, internships, and weekly farmers’ market.
We get in the car and visit her beekeeper friend Sue Dompke, who combines her honey-and-beeswax business with research and education, including hands-on workshops. Then it’s on to Shawn Murray and Casey Dahl and their three goats at Folk Tree Farm. Together, they also manage an apple orchard for a cidery on the mainland, and I promise to visit the taproom in Ellison Bay when I’m back.
Hotel Washington; Shawn Murray of Folk Tree Farm on Washington Island
Photos by Christina Holmes
But today we’re exploring their own small orchard, where we walk by rows of tomatoes, lettuce, and beans to arrive at an old wood homestead cabin. A year ago, the island’s first documented tornado whipped through here. Resilience is vital to island life, and the unpredictable conditions accompanying climate change will demand more of it. “You’re especially aware of supporting your local community here,” says Murray, who believes the future will require not just finding sustainable solutions, but “pacing life completely differently.”
On the ferry back I resolve to heed the lesson. I could spend my final hours hurtling around the peninsula—there are still four more state parks to see!—but instead I return to Sister Bay for a slice of true Wisconsin: Earl’s Sister Bay Bowl, a bar near the Dörr hotel where locals eat fried perch and talk about how their fishing went, and where the bowlers using the six alleys at the back score their games.
Earl’s Sister Bay Bowl
Photo by Christina Holmes
The interior—with its lit Budweiser signs and coin-operated arcade games—is a world away from the Dörr’s sleek proposition. Manager Paula Anschutz introduces me to the state’s official cocktail, a brandy old-fashioned, which she serves sweet or sour or with seltzer. I decide to try one of each. By the second drink, I’m eating cheese curds with a group of Paula’s cousins. By the third, Paula’s mother, Penny Anschutz, the bar’s owner, has me helping reset one of the broken lanes.
Paula tells me that this place has been in the family for four generations: Her great-grandpa bought it in 1944 when the bar was a hotel. “This [space] used to be the dance hall,” she says. “In 1958, my grandpa said, ‘Dancing’s out, and bowling’s in’ and put in the lanes.” For the first two years, the pins were set and replaced by hand.
Later that night, after a couple more of the bar’s brandy old-fashioneds, I consider Paula Anschutz’s story, and the stories of everyone else I’ve met along the way. I realize that the communities of Door County have always known how to accommodate change—they just do so on their own time. Maybe the slower, more considered pace of life is exactly what is required to create a more sustainable place, and a more sustainable future. In this way, the next generation of peninsula dwellers may prove a model for us all.
Pioneer Store in Ellison Bay was originally built in 1900; the Bailey’s Harbor Ridge Lights were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
Photo by Christina Holmes
The Afar guide to Door County
With 300 miles of shoreline, 34 named islands, supper clubs, and five state parks, Door County is a special slice of Wisconsin.
By Katherine LaGrave
When to Go
Door County’s high season begins in May, when apple and cherry trees bloom, and dwindles in October after peak fall foliage; visit in June or September to avoid the heavier crowds. Nowhere is more than an hour-and-a-half drive in the peninsula, making it suitable for a long weekend (three–four days) or a more leisurely week. Note that many places are only open seasonally, so be sure to check with specific properties about hours before visiting.
How to Get There
By car, Door County is four hours north from Chicago, five hours east from Minneapolis, and about three hours from both Madison and Milwaukee. The closest airport, Green Bay Austin Straubel International, is roughly an hour from Sturgeon Bay, which is the county’s largest city.
Where to Stay
When it opened in Sister Bay, 45 minutes north of Sturgeon Bay, in spring 2021, the Dörr was the first new hotel in the town in 20 years. The boutique property’s 47 rooms and suites nod to the area’s Scandinavian heritage and feature a minimalist design aesthetic, with white shiplap walls and custom white oak furnishings. The hotel is right across the street from Sister Bay’s beach and walking distance to 14 bars and restaurants, including Door County Creamery, known for its artisanal cheeses, and Al Johnson’s, a family-owned Swedish restaurant housed in a log cabin with a sod roof.
For something quieter, take the ferry to Washington Island. In the stately Hotel Washington, dating to 1904, eight carefully restored rooms feature hand-carved beds and organic linens, and guests share two bathrooms. For a little more privacy, a cottage suite in the backyard has its own bathroom and outdoor space. Yoga studio space is available, and the hotel’s farm-to-table restaurant offers seasonal menus that center island produce.
Where to Eat and Drink
In the town of Ephraim, Mukhtar Aghazada brings dishes from his Azerbaijan homeland to Anatolia Cuisine DC, which opened in 2024. You can’t go wrong with the falafel, kofta (meatballs), and baklava. The nearby Prince of Pierogi restaurant, run by Poland native Krzysztof Krol, provides picnic sustenance.
For a taste of Wisconsin winemaking, stop by Anchored Roots Vineyard & Winery in Egg Harbor, where Eric and Amy Gale produce rosés, reds, and crisp white wines made from a blend of hardy grapes bred for cold climates. Sway Brewing + Blending in the fishing town of Baileys Harbor celebrates the Midwest with its beers, which are made from locally sourced ingredients such as spruce tips, cherries, and flowers. In the mornings, the light-filled space doubles as a bakery and coffee shop, serving cinnamon rolls and scones made with flour from Wisconsin grains and coffee from Isely Coffee Roasters in Ephraim, eight miles away.
At Cultured in Sister Bay, Mattea Fischer is devoted to all things fermented: sauerkraut, kimchi, and sourdough bread and bagels that draw locals for flavors including asiago and black pepper.
Wisconsin supper clubs—most often known for their relaxed, social atmosphere and set menus—are a thing: Family-owned Donny’s Glidden Lodge Restaurant on the shores of Lake Michigan is a solid option. Go for the Friday fish fry and order a brandy old-fashioned, Wisconsin’s official state cocktail. Reservations are highly recommended.
What to Do
Explore some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the Midwest at the Ridges Sanctuary, established in 1937 as Wisconsin’s first land trust and today one of the peninsula’s foremost forces in conservation. Trails are open from dawn until dusk, and guided hikes happen Monday through Saturday from summer to fall.
In Fish Creek, catch an outdoor performance of the Peninsula Players Theatre, which has been staging comedies, dramas, and musicals since 1935. (It is the oldest professional resident summer theater in the country.) An all-weather pavilion means the show always goes on; the 2025 season runs from June to October. Another company, Northern Sky Theater, performs year-round in Peninsula State Park.
Door County produces roughly 99 percent of the state’s tart cherries, which appear around the peninsula in everything from baked strudel to atop glazed salmon. To pick the fruit yourself, head to Soren’s Valhalla Orchards in Sturgeon Bay (open from June to October), where founder and fourth-generation farmer Toni Sorenson is eager to talk about the heritage of fruit growing in the area.
For hiking, biking, history, and wildlife viewing, hop on the ferry to Door County’s islands: With a lavender farm and Schoolhouse Beach—renowned for some of the clearest water in the U.S.—Washington Island is the county’s largest, most popular island, and the only one with year-round residents; Rock Island, slightly northeast, has an Icelandic-style boathouse, 10 miles of trails, and the oldest lighthouse on Lake Michigan.
