Gills Rock and Northport Pier

The pier at Gills Rock sits where Door County's lumber economy once ran full tilt. In the 1870s, this harbor — then called Hedgehog Harbor — was ringed by competing piers, schooners queued offshore waiting their turn to load cordwood and shingles bound for Milwaukee and Chicago. That world is gone, but the submerged remains of Tostenson Pier and two wrecked schooners still lie in the shallows, now part of Wisconsin's State Register of Historic Places.