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.

Wisconsin Maritime Museum

75 Maritime Dr., Manitowoc

The museum takes visitors back 150 years to the coast’s fledgling shipbuilding and fishing industries. Stand next to a full-size cross section of the schooner Clipper City. Learn how shipbuilding and shipping became some of the first industries in the newly formed state of Wisconsin. Stroll along a port city boardwalk where shipbuilders, sailors and traders walked in the mid-1800s. Peer into shop windows to see the goods transported by schooners. Trace the area’s commercial fishing history from its early days to the 21st century. And, tour USS Cobia, a fully restored submarine that represents the 28 subs built in Manitowoc during WWII.

Door County Maritime Museum

120 N. Madison Ave., Sturgeon Bay

Follow the evolution of the area’s shipbuilding history from its early days of handmade birch bark canoes to Great Lakes lumber schooners to seagoing naval combatants. See scale models of boats and ships built in Sturgeon Bay, including half-hull or plating models, corporate models and folk art models. Learn about the area’s many lighthouses, which are vital to the safety of the area’s busy shipping waters. See a full-size replica of the lantern room of Sherwood Point lighthouse with its 4th order Fresnel lens. And, tour the restored John Purves tugboat to learn more about life aboard a hard-working Great Lakes tug.

Added in 2026

Wisconsin Maritime Museum, Manitowoc, 2025. Photo: AsherHeimermann, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Both museums are still the southern and northern anchors of the coast, and both have grown since the original page went up.

Wisconsin Maritime Museum, Manitowoc

Founded in 1969 as the Manitowoc Submarine Memorial Association, the museum received USS Cobia in 1970; the submarine became a National Historic Landmark in 1986. Besides daily tours of Cobia, the museum runs overnight stays aboard for youth groups and private bookings, and shows the 65-ton steam engine of the car ferry Chief Wawatam. Cobia's SJ-1 radar is believed to be the oldest operating radar set in the world. The museum hosted the October 2021 ceremony celebrating the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, designated that summer.

Door County Maritime Museum, Sturgeon Bay

Founded at Gills Rock in 1969, the museum opened its year-round Sturgeon Bay building in 1997. It now also runs the Cana Island Lighthouse near Baileys Harbor and the Death's Door Maritime Museum at Gills Rock. The big change in Sturgeon Bay is the Jim Kress Lighthouse Tower, a ten-story addition with exhibits and an observation deck that opened in 2021. The tug John Purves, built in 1919 and used by the U.S. Army in World War II, is still tied up outside.

Sources: Wikipedia articles on the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, USS Cobia and the Door County Maritime Museum (read November 2026).

Questions visitors ask

Can you sleep aboard USS Cobia?

Yes. The Wisconsin Maritime Museum offers overnight stays on the submarine for youth groups and also private overnight bookings. Check the museum's site for current programs.

Is the Door County Maritime Museum one site or three?

Three: the main museum and lighthouse tower in Sturgeon Bay, the Death's Door Maritime Museum at Gills Rock, open seasonally, and the Cana Island Lighthouse near Baileys Harbor.

Original text restored from the Wayback Machine capture of July 7, 2014. Typos and dead links were tidied; nothing else in the original section was rewritten. How this archive works.