Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
These Lake Michigan quasi-sister cities were originally home to tribes of Ojibwa, Pot-
awatomi,andOttawa.Thetranquilharborsattractedfurtraders,andby1795,theNorthwest
FurCompanyhadbuiltitsposthere.UnderEuropeans,theareaprosperedduringtheheady
early decades of whitefish plunder and shipbuilding; the latter is still around.
Charter Fishing
Charter fishing is big business. Coho and king salmon, along with lake and brown trout
(and some rainbow), are most popular for skippers in these waters.
This small bight was a port of call for weary Great Lakes travelers—the earliest ones in
birchbark canoes—heading for Chicago. Drive out into the countryside and you can still
see smokehouses and bake ovens on early farmsteads, log threshing barns large enough to
drive machinery through, split-rail fencing, and unique cantilever house designs.
An enormous fishing industry came and, thanks to overfishing through injudicious use
of drift nets and seines, went. However, the so-called Clipper City shifted to producing
ships beginning in the 1800s, peaking around World War II, when Manitowoc's shipyard
became one of the most important naval production facilities in the country.
