Door County, Wisconsin - Chapter 40: The.rise and Fall of Rowleys Bay, 1917

About a thousand miles from New York and almost as far from a railroad lies Rowleys Bay. It is the last little cove of Lake Michigan to the northward dipping deep into a land of reeds and rushes, of mink and muskrat, of marshmallows and odorous balsams. At the head of the bay is a sluggish lagoon, masquerading under the name of Mink River. Here the pickerel in June are reckless and the black bass bite with abandon. Aside from these annual piscatorial activities Rowleys Bay is as quiet and secluded as the North Pole - as indolent as the sunrise of a June morning.

But the name of Rowleys Bay has not always been the synonym of peace and pickerel. There was a time when the commercial possibilities of Rowleys Bay were eagerly discussed from Chicago to Tacoma, and glowing lithographs eloquently describing financial investments at Rowleys Bay, possible and impossible, were scattered by the tens of thousands. But we are anticipating.

"by the name of Peter Rowley. He was one of that eccentric tribe of western pioneers who feel themselves crowded to suffocation if they have a neighbor within a day's journey. In 1835 he became oppressed by the imaginary congestion of the little frontier post at Fort Howard. He packed his possessions into a boat and fled far to the northward past an uninhabited wilderness. Fifty miles away he came to Sturgeon Bay, as quiet and undisturbed as the morning after creation. Here at the mouth of the bay on the west side, where now stands Cabot's Lodge, he pitched his tent, thinking he had left civilization behind forever.*

But an evil fate pursued him. After a few years other eccentric pioneers followed his trail and settled in secluded coves not many miles away. On a real clear day he could see the smoke from their cabin chimneys rise above the treetops of the distant horizon. This was intolerable. Once more he fled from congestion.

He followed the shore of Door County to its extreme northern point. Not a living soul of white men had settled north of him on the peninsula and Peter Rowley grew hopeful. Then as his boat was bobbing on the waves of Death's Door passage his keen old eyes discerned the boat of a lonesome fisherman who lived at Washington Harbor, fifteen miles away. Sadly he rounded the point into Lake Michigan.

1 Peter Rowley entered a tract of 50 acres, described as lot 1, section 23, town 28, range 25, later known as Sherwoods Point or Idlewild, on Nov. 5, 1838, being one of the earliest land entries within the limits of Door County.

Then he discovered Rowleys Bay. He examined it carefully and believed he had discovered an oasis in the desert of civilization. Swamps to the north of him, swamps to the south of him, the great lake in front of him - here surely was a spot where he might live and die in peace. Contentedly he reared his cabin on the shore and ate his venison and his fish. In times of extreme need he made up a raft of logs from the timber on the Government land around him. In this he was assisted by two women who lived with him. "Whether they were his wives, sisters or mothers-in-law is not known. As far as we know he lived and died contentedly, his name preserved to posterity as the discoverer of Rowleys Bay.

Strictly speaking, Rowleys Bay was not discovered' by Peter Rowley. A few years before he began to fish in Mink River some other white men camped there for several weeks and ate of its fish until they loathed the sight of it. The story of this adventure is as follows:

In 1834 Northern Door County was surveyed by a surveyor named John Brink and his assistants. One time in the fall of that year he found that provisions were running short and a messenger by the name of James McCabe was dispatched to Hamilton Arndt's trading post at Green Bay for supplies. Mounted on a trusty pony, named Polly, the mesenger started off with the instructions that he was to join Brink and his men at a certain place near Death's Door in three weeks.

The trip to the Indian trader's was made without incident, but on his return, when not far from Death's Door, he was taken prisoner by a band of Indians, who thought he was a deserter from the army. McCabe was about one hundred yards from the pack horse at the time, having stopped in a grove to camp over night, and when the Indians seized him they did not know that he had a horse with him and they would not, or rather could not, let him explain, as he did not understand their dialect.

The Indians were sometimes called upon to assist the soldiers in running down deserters, and when they were of any assistance they were always supplied with a little whiskey for their services, and with the prospect in view of getting some "'firewater" for the return of McCabe to the Government fort they watched him carefully. The more he remonstrated the more the Indians imagined he was a deserter.

McCabe, therefore, not knowing but what the red men intended to burn him ata stake, was compelled to go with the Indians while Polly, with the pack of provisions, was left grazing in the little grove.

"Those fool Injuns actually made McCabe carry a canoe five miles across the peninsula," said Mr. Brink when telling the story, "and he was taken to Hamilton Arndt's headquarters, where the Injun trader had some difficulty in making the varmints believe that McCabe was not a deserter from the army.

"All this time, we, of course, were waiting for the packman at the place appointed and were without anything to cat, having waited two days, and lived during that time on nothing but hope. Still no packman, and we had no firearms to kill game, even if any could have been found. At the expiration of two days you can imagine that we were pretty hungry. We concluded to get something to eat when the third day rolled around, and we moved on toward the lake and discovered a little creek running into the big body of water.?

"As luck would have it the stream was full of fish, and we had no trouble in catching all the big fellows we wanted. There was one man in our party who was so hungry that he didn't even wait to cook the fish. He just scraped off the scales and chewed the stuff up almost before the finny creature was dead.

"For just eleven days we lived on nothing but roasted fish. It was fish for breakfast, fish for dinner and fish for supper, and you can better believe we were sick of fish before we got through with our experience. We had no salt or anything to flavor the stuff with; it was simply roast fish day after day. It sickened me of fish and I haven't eaten any since. It kept life in us however. When relief did come it came unexpectedly.

"The twelfth day that we arose to begin the day with a fish breakfast, we heard the tinkling of a bell, and on the crest of a little hill we saw old Polly. As soon as she discovered us' she came galloping up, neighing as if overjoyed to see us. She was so pleased to see us that she actually laughed. I could see her eyes blaze with delight, and as she rubbed her nose against my shoulder she appeared to be brimful of happiness.

"The pack containing the pork and beans and flour was still strapped to her back, and you can wager all you have got that we had a good square meal that day. As far as we could learn Polly had gone back to the place from where McCabe had started with her, and not finding us there had wandered around the country following our trail, and finally discovered us.

"The next day McCabe appeared, having been released as soon as the Indian trader explained matters to his captors. He expected to find a rather sickly looking lot of men, and if he didn't find what he thought he would he certainly did a fishy crowd, for we were covered with scales and smelled like the inside of a whale."

The history of Rowleys Bay for the next thirty or forty years is a blank as far as human interest is concerned. Gradually the lumber companies found their way thither. Camps were built where the men sat in their bunks and swapped stories of the woods. A pier was built and huge cargoes of telegraph poles, ties and cordwood, were shipped. The work of destruction pursued the even tenor of its way.

In 1876 S. A. Rogers arrived from New York. He had a farm in Illinois which through the medium of a real estate agent he traded off for a vast acreage of land and water at Rowleys Bay. Unfortunately the land and the water were mixed together after a somewhat haphazard formula, constituting a 4,000 acre tract of swamp lands covered with a pretty good stand of cedar. Being a man of energy Mr. Rogers built a large sawmill which sometimes scaled a run of seven or eight million feet of sawed lumber in a season. He built a commodious pier along which nearly always lay a vessel or two loading. He also built a store and other buildings for the accommodation of the growing business of the place.

All this business centered on the cedars which were big enough to cut. But there were millions of cedars too small even to make a fence post. Of what use were they? Much cogitation on this subject followed.

About 1885 a man was found who solved this puzzle. This was J. H. Matthews of Milwaukee who understood the process of making cedar oil. He built a factory on the northeast side of Rowleys Bay where he employed about twenty-five men. Cedar twigs were cut and placed in a tank or retort. The dimensions of this retort were 4 by 22 by 8 feet, the top being convex. The steam from this retort was taken up into a four-inch pipe and cooled and conducted through a succession of pipes of decreasing diameters placed zig zag fashion in the bed of a small creek fed by cold spring water. After the steam had meandered through these cold pipes for a distance of about two hundred feet it trickled into a receiving tank in the shape of limpid oil which sold at $8 per gallon. For two years the business was pushed and paid very well.

Mr. Matthews was a man of enterprise and ambition. He reasoned that if good money could be made out of waste timber products in such an inaccessible place as Rowleys Bay, much more could be made if the business was enlarged and established in a more central place. Accordingly he pulled up his cooling pipes and moved to Marshfield where he undertook to make wood alcohol. He promptly failed in business and with this his part in the history of Door County is finished.

About 1892 Mr. Rogers found an opportunity of trading off several hundred acres of his swampy estate for a farm in Missouri. Through another trade this tract of swamp land was transferred to a Mr. Ditlef C. Hanson of Tacoma, Wash. In the course of time Mr. Hanson came to inspect his purchase.

He found the land lay too low for farming, too high for fishing. The timber was all gone. It was too inaccessible for a frog preserve and muck was drug on the market. What was it good for?

Mr. Hanson had one great ambition in life. He had heard of other men laying out a townsite, waxing rich by the sale of building lots and famous by having the town named after them. He reasoned that since his Rowleys Bay possession was fit for nothing else, if it was not created in vain it must be intended for a townsite. True, it was wet, but Mr. Hanson being a man of reading recalled that a wet foundation was no barrier to the most shining successes in city building. Chicago was built in a marsh. Venice was built in a lagoon and Shanghai was originally a frog pond. A townsite then it was to be forever to immortalize its founder - Ditlef C. Hanson! He debated whether to call it Ditlef's Hope or Hansonburg, but finally rejected both as lacking in euphony. Instead he called it Tacoma Beach as being both resonant and reminiscent of the city of his home. This important point being settled in haste he hied him to a printer.

Townsite lithographs are wonderful things. In 1836, long before there was a single settler in Kewaunee County, a townsite was platted about where the City of Kewaunee now stands and large fortunes were made and lost by means of an eloquent lithograph. A nomadic fur-trader had shortly before that time picked up something in the swamp at the mouth of Kewaunee River which his imagination had transmitted into gold. Rumor reached the ears of some enterprising promoters who proceeded to lay out a townsite. Not a settler at that time lived within thirty miles of the place but that did not prevent the project from becoming a great transient success. A number of men of national fame became interested, among them being such men as John Jacob Astor, Governor Doty, Governor Beals, Judge Morgan L. Martin, Hon. Sanford E. Church, General Ruggles, Colonel Crocker and ex-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Salmon P. Chase. For a while there was much debate in the minds of great financiers whether to invest in Chicago or Kewaunee real estate. In April, 1836, a forty-acre tract in the swamp was sold to Governor Doty for $15,000. Judge Martin had entered a tract of eighty acres in the swamp from the government. This he sold within a few days to his distinguished colleague, Chief Justice Chase, for $38,000.00. These and other lands were subdivided into lots and on September 2, 1836, a grand auction was held in Chicago. There was a great rush for the lots, some selling as high as a thousand dollars, and the promoters reaped barrels of money. For a while there was much slushing around in top boots in the Kewaunee swamp in search for gold. Nothing was found, the investors went sadly away, and the land reverted into an untaxed and unsettled wilderness for the next thirty years.

Our Ditlef C. Hanson had no such rosy dreams of success. He did not know any governors or Supreme Court Justices. But he did his best with the material at hand. He got out a stock of splendid lithographs. These showed a townsite plat more than a mile long with wide streets and curving avenues. No such common names as Pike street or Billings avenue were here permitted. They were all sonorous street names, reminiscent of the glory of the Republic, like Arlington avenue, Columbia street, Potomac Boulevard, etc. Along the shore a beautiful park was shown enlivened by smart carriages and gay children dashing around on roller skates. Some streets were marked with street car lines and certain corners were marked as occupied by a public library, postoffice, sanitarium, bank or other institution of might. Even sluggish old Mink River as if taking new life by this activity was pictured as a dashing stream, leaping over boulders and plunging at last into the lake by means of an inspiring waterfall. All in all it was the most imposing document ever published setting forth the charms of Door County.

Armed with these lithographs Mr. Hanson returned to Tacoma and opened the campaign. He showed them to friends and foes who were duly impressed and sometimes bought. He discovered, however, that the vastness of the American continent lying between Tacoma and Tacoma Beach deterred many who would otherwise eagerly have invested. Because of this and because, like Moses, he was slow of speech though of great resource, he determined to go to Chicago and sell out. He went to Chicago where he met a man by the name of Lowenstein or Rosencrans. To him he sold his entire stock of lithographs with the townsite thrown in. $

Mr. Lowenstein or Rosencrans was enthusiastic about his purchase. He went out into the highways and byways of the city and explained the lithographs to all who would listen. He showed them how they could live happily there at Tacoma Beach, or, if they would not, how they could die, secure in the faith that their money was well invested and their widows would bless their memory. His arguments were irrefutable.

In due course of time many of these investors came to view the paradise of their purchase. Among them was a semi-invalid who came with a full equipment of paint and pots and brushes. He had taken the job of painting the cottages of the new city. Some went as far as Sturgeon Bay, others went on to Fish Creek and Sister Bay, while still others persisted in pushing on to Rowleys Bay, before they were disillusioned. Alas, they each and all discovered that they had forgotten the most important part of their equipment for viewing the new city - top boots!

We will not linger over the gnashing of teeth or the bitter recriminations heaped upon old Lowenstein or Rosencrans. The lots were sold and the lithographs used up, so he merely shrugged his shoulders and turned his thoughts to other things. So also, after a while, did the dupes. Their money was gone so they wasted no more in paying taxes on their submerged lots and Lakeside boulevard. It remained now only for a long suffering county board to unravel the tangle. Finally the

After eight years flight in financial circles Rowleys Bay returned once more to its undisturbed seclusion. -In the parks of the new city the frogs croak by day and the crickets chirp by night. Even frisky old Mink River has ceased from its gambols and settled into its sluggish solitude where the pickerel in June are reckless and the black bass bite with abandon.