Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
From the record
“The Freeman and Jesse Thorp House and Cottages are located in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, United States. In 1997 the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places.”
Wikipedia article Freeman and Jesse Thorp House and Cottages, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 68 National Register listings published here for Door County · listed in 1997 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.97000887- 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.
Fish Creek was so named by Increase Claflin who settled there, as has been stated, in 1842. For a few years he and his family lived here in solitude, the only one on the peninsula north of Sturgeon Bay. In 1847 he was joined by Van Renssa- Jaer Marshall who with his two sons, William and Van Renssalaer Marshall, moved up from the Bay Settlement near Green Bay in 1847. The elder Marshall froze to death in November, 1862. He was returning from Ephraim to Fish Creek by boat and as night drew on he for some unknown reason anchored at Eagle Island which was then deserted. He wrapped up in his sail and laid down in his boat to sleep. During the night it turned very cold and the old man did not again wake up. There were no other settlers until Asa Thorp came a few years later and opened up the country by his pier.
Among the earliest to join the little settlement at Fish Creek, mostly as woodchoppers, were John and Stephen Norton. They came in 1857. In those days no saws were used in making cordwood. Yet some of these woodchoppers were able to put up three to four cords of wood per day with an axe. John and Steve Norton were great choppers, one winter putting up no less than 400 cords between them. The same year also came John Brown, the later sage of Fish Creek, Horace Poppleton, Michael F. Kalmbach and John Torrey. The latter had a house on the hill east of Fish Creek later known as the Barringer farm. He was a cooper. So were also Poppleton and Brown.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 5 fires within 5 miles of Freeman and Jesse Thorp House and Cottages
between 2018 and 2020, burning about 5 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
2
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
2 workings within 5 miles of Freeman and Jesse Thorp House and Cottages: 2 producers.
All of them still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, 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.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Fish Creek, the town this property stands in, in 10 storm reports between 1998 and 2024: 6 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail, 1 lightning.
The reports record 1 injury. 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.
Lightning struck a home in Fish Creek around 2:30 pm CST. Every fire department in Door County, except Washington Island, helped fight the fire but the house and attached three-stall garage were a total loss. Three vintage automobiles were also destroyed by the fire.
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
6 within 8 miles
Other 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.
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.
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