A nod to Port’s fishing past

Port Washington’s west slip once epitomized the romance of the water. A row of fishing shanties lined the slip, providing a home for the accoutrements of the commercial fishing that Port was famous for — everything from nets to ice to barrels and smokehouses.

Fishing tugs would moor along the slip and unload their catches, loads and loads of whitefish, chubs, perch and trout, which would then be processed.

Two of Port’s most notable fishing families, the Smiths and Ewigs, centered their operations around the west slip area of the harbor.

Today, all but one of those simple buildings is gone, replaced by the Harbor Square condominium buildings. All that remains of shanty row is the Smith Bros. “Fish” shanty at the east end of the peninsula, next to Fisherman’s Park.

Shanty row is about to get its due. The Port Washington Historical Society received approval last week from the Common Council to place a historical marker at Fisherman’s Park commemorating the shanties and fishing families that plied the waters of Lake Michigan.

The marker will be paid for using funds donated by Dan Smith of the Smith fishing family, but is to commemorate all the fishing families of Port Washington, particularly those who built fish shanties, Nancy Holley, vice president of the Historical Society board of directors, said.

The marker, which names the Bossler, Cayner, Van Ells, Ewig, Lodde, Godersky and Smith families, notes that for more than 100 years, until 2001, the area was used by commercial fishermen to moor their boats, repair their nets and process, pickle, smoke, pack and sell their catches.

It will also commemorate the lives of the fishermen who helped shaped Port Washington.

“Commercial fishermen to me are the best seamen out there,” Rick Smith, a Port Washington marine historian, said. “It was a hard life. You were up at 4 in the morning. You’d be out, way out, on the lake, and you’d be out all day. They were long days. It was romantic, but it was work.

“Most of these guys were characters. They worked hard, and they played hard.”

  The west slip was created by diverting the mouth of Sauk Creek to the south, Smith said, and despite the fact that the waves would roll in, it was a prime spot for fishermen to dock their boats.

“It was pretty convenient for them,” he said. 

The north slip became home to many of the city’s industries, including the Wisconsin Chair Co. and Turner Foundry, which would later house Moldcraft and the Kewpie doll factory, Smith said.

The Ewig family established its shanty on the far west end of the slip, Jeff Ewig said. 

“They could unload their Lake Michigan fish right there,” he said. 

The building was largely used for net storage and repair, Ewig said, noting it contained large spinning racks to wind the nets and areas to repair them as well.

“It was just a busy area,” he said, especially in the early morning and at the end of the day when boats would go out and come in. “In the middle of the day, it was pretty quiet when they were all out fishing.”

The shanties didn’t just add to the fishing ambience of downtown by their appearance. Several also served as smokehouses, their scents mingling with those of downtown and the lakefront, and the Smith and Ewig families operated markets there for their respective fishing operations.

Eventually, the west slip was dominated by two families, the Ewigs and the Smiths, said Smith, who is not related to the fishing family.

Smith said the slip was made up, from east to west, by the Smith “Fish” net house, then a cork-lined structure that served as an ice house — the ice was cut from the Cedarburg Bog and stored there —followed by a processing building. A tiled smoke and brine house was next, where fish were brined in wooden barrels as large as 10 feet in diameter on the second floor before being smoked. There was a gap, then a net shed that burned down, followed by the Ewig family’s green barn building.

The net houses were essential, Smith said, noting that the commercial fishing operations needed a place to string and store nets.

“These were cotton nets, and they had to be dried or they would rot,” he said. 

Many of the shanties were washed away in the flood of 1924, but several were rebuilt. As commercial fishing waned, however, the shanties and fishing buildings were repurposed as shops and a maritime museum operated by Smith and Allan “Butch” Klopp filled the spaces.

But by the late 1990s, commercial fishing all but disappeared from the Port lakefront. The last fishing tug docked in the west slip, the Linda E, disappeared along with her three-man crew — Captain Leif Weborg Scott Matta and Warren Olson Jr. — on Dec. 11, 1998, and with it the city’s commercial fishing industry.

The remains of the sunken boat were found in 2000, and the Coast Guard found substantial evidence that the tugboat had been run over by the tug Michigan and barge Great Lakes.  

The land where the shanties once stood was sold that same year, and eventually all the property with the exception of the “Fish” shanty was razed and replaced with condominium and commercial buildings.

The Smith Bros. “Fish” shanty was sold at auction and restored for use as an office and apartment — the lone reminder of a once-thriving industry.

Holley noted that the process of obtaining a historical marker is lengthy, and obtaining the city’s permission to place the double-sided marker in Fisherman’s Park — as well as an assurance the city will maintain it — are among the first steps.

She noted that a historical marker that will be placed near Inventor’s Brew Pub was approved by the city in 2019 is expected to be installed this year.

The fish shanty marker will likely be erected sometime next year, Holley said.