BlockFrom the record
One of 68 National Register listings published here for Door County · listed in 1974 · category: Site.
Sources: the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service · the Wikipedia article
Clearing, The
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
The listing
- Address. Off WI 42, Ellison Bay, 54210
- When was it listed? December 1974
- Category. site
- Town. Liberty Grove town
- National Register reference number. 74000080 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
The ground it stands on
4,444 wordsThe chapter on Liberty Grove Town in History Of Door County Wisconsin The County Beautiful, published 1917 names Ellison Bay. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.
One morning in February, 1877, Avle Simonson and his son, Alfred, sailed from Ellison Bay in their fishing boat with a passenger for Detroit Harbor. The passenger was Miss Dora Higgins (later Mrs. Albert Kalmbach) who was going to Washington Island to teach school. They arrived at Detroit Harbor about noon and as the wind was fair they started immediately for their home. They had not gone far, however, before a blinding snowstorm out of the northwest descended upon them, shutting out all vision except immediately around the boat.
Passage source: History Of Door County Wisconsin The County Beautiful, published 1917.
Their friends in Ellison Bay waited in vain for the return of the fishermen. The wind which had been from the northeast had changed to the northwest but was still favorable for a speedy return providing no obstacles were encountered. In "the Door," however, where the drifting ice floes from many directions met to jostle each other, no man could rely on the wind or the ice for a safe return. Several days went by and the two fishermen were finally given up as lost.
Passage source: History Of Door County Wisconsin The County Beautiful, published 1917.
Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.
Read the whole chapter on Liberty Grove Town - 4,444 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.
Fires near this property
7 since 1993Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 7 fires within 5 miles of Clearing, The between 1993 and 2020, burning about 4 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 3 |
| Debris and open burning | 3 |
| Recreation and ceremony | 1 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 August 2018 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources | 379 |
| 5 July 2018 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources | 268 |
| 7 May 2018 | Debris and open burning | 1.0 acres | Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources | 172 |
| 2 December 2020 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources | 473 |
| 19 December 2020 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources | 493 |
| 21 November 1993 | Recreation and ceremony | under an acre | Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources | not named |
| 7 January 2018 | Debris and open burning | 1.0 acres | Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources | 10 |
Mines and quarries near this property
1 within 5 milesRegional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Clearing, The: 1 producer. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Where | Site | Commodity | Status | Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Door Pit North | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Producer |
Storms near this property
3 since 2002Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Ellison Bay, the town this property stands in, in 3 storm reports between 2002 and 2017: 3 thunderstorm wind. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2015 | Thunderstorm Wind | Ellison Bay | $6,000 | Thunderstorm winds downed a few trees and power lines near Ellison Bay. |
| July 2017 | Thunderstorm Wind | Ellison Bay | - | Thunderstorm winds downed trees across the road on Highway 42 and Mink River Road, in Ellison Bay. The time of this report was estimated based on radar data. |
| July 2002 | Thunderstorm Wind | Ellison Bay | - | no account filed |
Map coverage status
No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.
Listed places nearby
5 within 8 milesOther National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.
| Photograph | Property | Distance | Listed |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Jischke's Meat Market | 5.7 miles | 1986 |
| Plum island Life-Saving and Light Station | 6.4 miles | 2010 | |
 | Plum Island Range Rear Light | 6.4 miles | 1984 |
| GRAPE SHOT (schooner) Shipwreck | 6.9 miles | 2016 | |
 | Pilot Island Light | 7.6 miles | 1983 |
Sources for this property
| National Archives record | The nomination case file for reference 74000080 in Record Group 79. |
| Wikipedia article | Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA. |
| Door County | All 68 listed properties in this county. |
Provenance
- Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
- Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
- How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
- Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
- Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
- Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.