Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal
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The Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal is a shipping canal connecting Sturgeon Bay on the Bay of Green Bay with Lake Michigan, across the Door Peninsula at the city of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. The canal consists of two parts: a dredged portion of Sturgeon Bay, and an approximately 1.3 mile long canal dug by a private group headed by then-president of Chicago and North Western Railway, William B. Ogden between 1872 and 1881, is approximately 7 miles in length. Although smaller craft began using the canal in 1880, it was not open for large-scale watercraft until 1890. In 1893, this group sold all interest in the canal to the United States government. Since that time, the canal has been maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Several famous lighthouses mark the course of the canal, including the Sturgeon Bay Canal Lighthouse halfway along the northern side of the canal (approximately 0.4 miles from Lake Michigan, on the north side of the canal), the Sturgeon Bay Canal North Pierhead Light on the Lake Michigan coastline, and the Sherwood Point Lighthouse in Idlewild, on the far western end, on the southern shore of the outer edge of Sturgeon Bay.
