Back in the mid-1800s Door County was a backwater frontier. With the arrival of European settlers there grew a need for law enforcement. The early sheriffs were not career law enforcement but a hodgepodge collection of immigrants, saloon keepers, loggers, farmers and whatnot. Compensation was a mix of fees and per-diems meant to supplement their primary source of income.
When Lorenzo Brown was elected in 1858 as the first sheriff the township of Otumba (now Sturgeon Bay) it was a mill town with dirt streets. A trip to Green Bay on horseback took seven hours.
Much has changed. With the arrival of roads and automobiles the highway patrol followed.
I took this photo (of a photo) in a watering hole in Sturgeon Bay. A modicum of web searching yielded almost nothing. So I posted the photo on Face Book and asked my motorhead friends for help. And they came through.
Best guesstimate is that it is an early 1950s model Oldsmobile or Chevrolet.
Incidentally, the building in the background is the county highway building in Sturgeon Bay. It continues in use today as the Headquarters for County Emergency Services and the Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC) of Door County.
There is a two-volume history of the county sheriff department at the library. Maybe I'll check it out.
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