Door County Style

This Week at Door County’s Crossroads We Honor Labor and the Land

Posted on 30. Aug, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

At Crossroads at Big Creek, we will celebrate both Labor Sunday and the Year of the Escarpment this week.
The first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882 and by 1884 it had become a National Holiday. The 1880s were a tragically violent time in our nation’s history and the Labor Day holiday was probably created [...]

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This Week at Door County’s Crossroads; Monarch Butterfly Tagging, Raspberry Ice Cream Social

Posted on 23. Aug, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

It’s monarch butterfly time at Crossroads at Big Creek.
Monarchs in all stages of development fill our flowery meadows. In the Collins Learning Center, we have been larvae-sitting and are thrilled to report that many of the caterpillars have metamorphosed into crystalides… beautiful  jade green studded with gold. We know that the gold comes from a chemical in the milkweed [...]

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This Week at Door County’s Crossroads: The Focus is on Flowers

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

This week, we are celebrating Door County’s flowers at Crossroads at Big Creek.
Everybody can recognize a flower, but that is not the same as knowing what a flower is. Family programs will focus on flowers and next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, August 16-18. The laboratory in the Collins Learning Center will expand to be [...]

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This Week at Door County’s Crossroads: Meteor Showers and One Hundred Years of Country Music

Posted on 04. Aug, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

On clear nights, streaks of light from the Perseid Meteor Shower are already appearing above Crossroads at Big Creek and lighting the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.
Scientists anticipate that the annual  Perseid Meteor shower will peak in the early hours of the morning oo August 12 and 13. All of next week, our summer family [...]

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This Week at Door County’s Crossroads: Vintage & Antique Treasure Sale, July 29-30; Spinning, Aug 1 and more

Posted on 26. Jul, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

On a misty July morning, few places in Door County are as beautiful as the prairie planting at Crossroads at Big Creek.
Prairies are not native to Door County, but they do occur in Wisconsin so about a dozen years ago, students from the School District of Sturgeon Bay planted prairie grasses and flowers about halfway [...]

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This Week at Crossroads: Enjoy an Ice Cream Sundae, July 25 and Treasure Sale, July 29-30

Posted on 21. Jul, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

Here’s another chance for you to enjoy an Ice Cream Social this Sunday at the Historical Village at The Crossroads.

The Door County Historical Society has deemed this week a Cherry Sundae event. But could that be historically accurate? Well, ice cream was first created in England for the court of Charles I around 1600. Here in the United States, our [...]

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This Week at Door County’s Crossroads: Thursday Meet DCIST, Live Music with Global Accord

Posted on 14. Jul, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

We celebrate folk  music from around the world this week at Crossroads at Big Creek, while reviling the invasive plants which came along with immigrants from those same foreign lands.
Small alien trees called  Buckthorns were brought from Europe to Wisconsin in the 1880s… a time when Door County was being settled by European immigrants. It seems to me [...]

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This Week at Door County’s Crossroads: WI DNR on Beech Bark Disease

Posted on 05. Jul, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

The words of an AFT musical, Lumberjacks in Love come to mind this week because we at Crossroads are thinking about the possibility of chopping down trees.
“If it’s not one thing, it’s two!” sing the lumberjacks… and that pretty much sums up the forest threat du jour from Beech Bark Disease .
On Friday, June 9 [...]

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Today at Door County’s Crossroads, Joe Knaapen Brings the Past to Life in Portraying 1850’s Congressman Edward S. Minor, July 4

Posted on 04. Jul, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

We  don’t “do politics” at Crossroads at Big Creek, but we have decided to make an exception on Independence Day. Our guest politician, Congressman Edward S. Minor, died in 1924, so we don’t think we will risk our non-profit status.
Every Sunday afternoon, the Door County Historical Society hosts a special event at The Historical Village [...]

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This Week at Crossroads: Jackalopes, Whipporsuckers and Lecture, More about Door County’s Groundwater Problem!

Posted on 13. Jun, 2010 by Coggin Heeringa.

Birds are hatching at Crossroads at Big Creek, causing some of our young visitors to wonder how birds know to mate with their own kind.
After all, we don’t find cardna-peckers, whipporsuckers or pileated hummingbirds. Birds of different species have very different habits. For example, a woodpecker would rarely come in contact with a swan.

But clearly, birds can recognize [...]

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