In 1853, Norwegian immigrant Andreas Iverson walked north over the ice from Green Bay to stake a claim on the horseshoe-shaped bay that would become Ephraim, founding a Moravian congregation and completing its church by 1859 — the first on the Door County peninsula. The settlement held its shape: zoning ordinances passed in 1948 still require every building to be white or naturally weathered wood, which is why one brown building remains the easiest address in town to give directions to. The Scandinavian inheritance runs deeper than paint codes. The fish boil — whitefish, red potatoes, salt, a cast-iron kettle — traces to the immigrants who fed lumberjacks and fishermen this way. On Washington Island, volunteer construction that began in 1983 produced a stave church modeled on Norway's 1150 Borgund, completed in 1995, its twelve 18-foot masts harvested locally. The settlers didn't just arrive. They kept building.
