"$2,000 Worth Of Equipment Lost on Ice Floe" from the April 3, 1925 Door County Advocate
$2,000 Worth Of Equipment Lost on Ice Floe
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Twin Cities Fishermen Watch Shanties Disappear After Narrow Escape from Going With Them
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MARINETTE—More than $2,000 worth of nets, a dozen or more shanties and as many ice sleighs besides the ice tools and fishing outfits of a dozen or more fishermen of the twin cities sailed out into Lake Michigan Thursday night with the ice breaking up on Green bay. Not a bit of ice on Green bay was visible from this port this morning, the earliest breakup in years and a month and three days earlier than last year when the ice went out on April 30. The year previous the breakup came on May 5.
Had the fishermen got on the ice a half-hour earlier than they attempted to Wednesday morning they would have undoubtedly have been with their nets and shanties somewhere out on Lake Michigan.
They quit their nets and outfits Tuesday afternoon while lifting when warned by the roar of the rushing water and cracking ice that the break was coming and hurried for shore encountering a crack 10 feet wide which they bridged with planks, getting their horses across although several horses went into the water before [they were] rescued. The crack gradually widened until there was no hope of getting back to the nets that night.
Watch Shanties Disappear
The next morning at four o'clock the fishermen following the shore line north of the city could see their shanties in the distance and near Arthur Bay went on to the ice field which was pressing the shore. They immediately, however, sought safety on shore as the ice moved out and they barely got off of it before a large space of open water separated it from shore. Had they reached the spot a half hour earlier they declare they could surely have attempted to reach their outfits and would have been caught on the drift.
Records of 26 years at the city water station show that only once in that time has there been an earlier breakup than this year and two years when the breakup came on the corresponding date of this year. The breakup in 1902 was an March 27 and again in 1910. In 1921 the ice left the bay on March 25. The latest breakup was May 20, 1923.
The usual date, the records show, is between April 16 and April 26.
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Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[Arthur Bay is about the same latitude as Gills Rock. In February 2025 dollars, the loss would be about $48,000.]
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