Foscoro: A Village that Was

More than 150 years ago it was known as Foscoro. Today it is Stony Creek, and nothing is the same. The once important creek is really nothing to write home about, and the bluffs high above the lakeshore are worn down much as the lakeshore in the rest of Kewaunee County. There was a time when residents didn't know in which county they lived, as the exact county line was somewhat obscure. After 1878 when Capt. Charlie Fellows secured a post office, the office jumped around from Kewaunee County to Door and back while only moving a few yards in the process.

Fellows' post office site request included a map indicating that the settlement was less than a few hundred feet to the north of Stony Creek. Wisconsin Underwater Archeology feels the Foscoro Pier which saw the shipment of thousands and thousands of posts and ties was almost directly off the end of today's Kennedy Road. Door Co. Historian D. Weimer, who grew up in the area, remembers being a kid and climbing around the wooden dam crib that was about 100 yards west of the existing bridge. He feels by then - the 1950s - the main channel had washed away all the evidence with the exception of a smaller channel just to the north that still had the cribbing in place.

Stories of the logging describes the amount of business there was for Wolf River/Ahnapee's Dr. Levi Parsons. In a newly settled, young and healthy area, the doctor's business depended on fingers sawn off - or worse. There were times when a Foscoro saloon brawl meant more business. Logging in the hamlet named for the owners Foster, Coe and Rowe was so good that an October 1866 Enterprise mentioned a steamer and six schooners that had cleared the pier on the 14th. All that remains of yesteryear's prosperity is the old photo (above) of the deteriorating mill and that of the Fellow's Eagle Hotel, surely named because it was high on the bluff.

The Fellows family was a Stony Creek fixture and one or another served the post office for at least 75 years. Nobody would have dreamed that the old Foscoro would come back to life while family members gathered at the Stony Creek cottage one July 1923 Sunday. There was a spot on the cottage whitewashed walls. The spot resembled an eagle in flight. As mailman Will reached up to brush it off, the whitewash fell away to reveal eagles in flight. Will, with others at the gathering, began to brush away the whitewash and were stunned to find a scene coming to life. Trees appeared. There was a fence. And then there was something resembling a castle at an opening between two bluffs in the center of the picture. A bay appeared in the foreground. Bluffs cut it off from a larger body of water. As those in attendance worked, an oil painting of a village emerged from the plaster.

When the group finished its work, the painting showed a man rowing a boat in a sheltered bay at the foot of the castle on the hill. Fellows felt the painting that was under at least 20 coats of whitewash was suggestive of Lake Michigan.

Fellows' cottage had belonged to the family for at least 20 years on that July day. Originally it was part of the Foscoro saloon built by Hugh Acker about 1878. The painting presented a flourishing village with a dance hall, a huge hotel, store, saloon and several residences. By the time the painting was found in the Fellows' cottage, the cottage was about all that remained of the village. Other buildings had burned or had just fallen down, buried under surrounding vegetation.

When the painting was found, there were evidences of a trail of two ruts running from the highway that twisted and wound its way down through the woods to the sawmill town at the lakeshore level. In an earlier day, stage coaches carrying passengers and mail followed the road, which was for some time the road from Ahnapee to Sturgeon Bay.

Foscoro has faded into history as have such Kewaunee County communities as Zavis, Darbellay, Sandy Bay and Forest Hill. The tiny village died not long after 1892 when the railroad came to Ahnapee. Just before the advent of Rural Free Delivery in Kewaunee County, the Foscoro/Stony Creek post office was moved to Woodside, a few miles to the southwest and just a few yards to the north of  Silver Creek. Today there are a few homes on either side of Stony Creek, a name that well describes the area. Lake Michigan continues its erosion at a place once deemed by the U.S. Department of Post Office to be important enough to have its own office.

Note: Stoney or Stony Creek? The picture of the old mill and today's Door Co. highway signs reflect the first spelling. D.Weimer reports that the 1990 plat book and other maps and the Door County Soil and Water Conservation Department use the second spelling.
Sources: An-An-api-sebe, Where is the River? c. 2001; Here Comes the Mail, Post Offices of Kewaunee County, c. 2010; D. Kleist interview, 1999, D.Weimer interviews and correspondence, on-going; Algoma Record Herald, Kewaunee Enterprise. Pictures from the blogger's collection.