Gills Rock and Northport Pier

The name comes from Elias Gill, who built a pier here for the lumber trade in 1873 and sold it a year later. What he left behind was a community — Hedgehog Harbor, later Gills Rock — where schooners once crowded three competing piers, loading cordwood and shingles bound for Milwaukee and Chicago. The wrecks of two of those vessels still rest in 10 to 15 feet of water offshore.