BAILEYS HARBOR, Wis. - The Wisconsin Historical Society announces the listing of the Peoria Shipwreck in the National Register of Historic Places on April 5, 2024. The schooner is located 0.15 miles northeast of the marina in Lake Michigan, near the Town of Baileys Harbor, Door County.

Peoria is a schooner constructed in 1854 by master carpenter Alanson Gilmore in Black River, Ohio, and operated in the Great Lakes through the grain, lumber and other bulk cargo trades for almost 50 years. On November 10, 1901, Peoria was bound from Charlevoix, Michigan with a cargo of hardwood lumber when it waited out a storm in Baileys Harbor. During the night, the anchors slipped. The storm pushed the schooner into shallow water in front of the Baileys Harbor Range Lights, settling into the sand quickly. Men from the Baileys Harbor Life-Saving Station rescued the crew of six, but the vessel remained stuck. No insurance was carried on the ship, and it was valued at only $2,000. The cargo was salvaged, the vessel was stripped, and rendered a total loss.

The vessel sits upright and largely intact on the sandy lake bottom, seven feet below the surface in Lake Michigan. With most of its hull components still there, Peoria provides historians and archaeologists the rare chance to study wooden schooner construction and the grain, lumber and other bulk cargo trades.

State and federal laws protect this shipwreck. Divers may not remove artifacts or structure when visiting this site. Removing, defacing, displacing, or destroying artifacts or sites is a crime. More information on Wisconsin’s historic shipwrecks may be found by visiting Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Shipwrecks website: Wisconsin Shipwrecks.

Additional information for the Peoria Shipwreck is available at:

https://wisconsinhistory.org/Records/NationalRegister/NR2768

To learn more about the State and National Register programs in Wisconsin, visit: https://wisconsinhistory.org/hp/register/

About the Wisconsin Historical Society

The Wisconsin Historical Society, founded in 1846, ranks as one of the largest, most active and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, its mission is to help people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. The Wisconsin Historical Society serves millions of people every year through a wide range of sites, programs and services. For more information, visit wisconsinhistory.org.