See Maritime Landmarks & History

Wisconsin’s Schooner Coast is overflowing with thousands of stories of brave ship captains, bustling maritime commerce and schooner shipwrecks. Plus, the sixty-mile coast boasts a bounty of maritime icons. We promise you’ll have an amazing voyage.

Maritime Museums

The state’s two largest maritime museums are the southern and northern anchors of the Schooner Coast. Each delivers a wealth of insight on the rich maritime heritage of Wisconsin’s Schooner Coast and helps guide your trip.

Shipwrecks

One hundred years ago, maritime navigation was treacherous and the shipping industry was unregulated so catastrophes were relatively common. Each shipwreck along the Schooner Coast conveys its own gripping tale.

Lighthouses

The Schooner Coast includes seven towering lighthouses that were constructed more than 100 years ago and equipped with brilliant lights to slice through moonless nights, dense fog and ferocious gales to guide schooners and other vessels safely into port.

Subs, Tugs & Car Ferries

The Schooner Coast is home to a number of modern maritime vessels that represent the area’s vibrant boatbuilding, commercial fishing and shipping industries. Today, multimillion-dollar yachts, one-thousand-foot lake freighters and research vessels are still constructed at shipyards in Manitowoc and Sturgeon Bay.

Added in 2026

Two of the four sections this page points to, Lighthouses and Subs, Tugs & Car Ferries, were never captured by the Wayback Machine. Their links now lead to new pages written for this archive, organized around the same list of landmarks and anchors the original used.

The biggest change on this stretch of water since 2015 is federal protection. In 2021 NOAA and the State of Wisconsin created the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, about 726 square nautical miles of Lake Michigan off Ozaukee, Sheboygan, Manitowoc and Kewaunee counties. At designation it held 36 known wrecks from the 1830s to 1930, and archival research suggests some 60 more are still undiscovered. The S.S. Badger became a National Historic Landmark in 2016, and the Kewaunee Pierhead Light joined the National Register in 2022.

A few more facts worth having before a visit:

In summer 2024 the sanctuary installed moorings at 24 wreck sites, so boats can tie up without anchoring on the hulls (Wikipedia). The shipwreck guide lists the wrecks off this stretch.
USS Cobia was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 14, 1986 (Wikipedia); see subs, tugs and car ferries.
A 1972 recording of the old Kewaunee foghorn, made by James A. Lipsky, is on the Library of Congress National Recording Registry (Wikipedia).
The scow schooner Alaska, built in Sheboygan in 1869, lies in about five feet of water off Two Rivers and was added to the National Register in 2017 (Wikipedia).

Sources: Wikipedia articles on the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, SS Badger and the Kewaunee Pierhead Light (read November 2026).

Questions visitors ask

What happened to the original Lighthouses and Subs, Tugs & Car Ferries pages?

They existed on the old site but no copy survives in the Wayback Machine. The archive rebuilt both at their old addresses with new, sourced text, clearly marked as 2026 additions.

Which Schooner Coast landmarks are National Historic Landmarks?

USS Cobia in Manitowoc (designated 1986) and the car ferry S.S. Badger (2016). Many lighthouses and shipwrecks on the coast are on the National Register of Historic Places, which is a separate, broader list.

Original text restored from the Wayback Machine capture of July 7, 2015. Typos and dead links were tidied; nothing else in the original section was rewritten. How this archive works.