Every summer, thousands of tourists flock to Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula. Businesses shuttered throughout the winter and spring reopen to sell food and souvenirs as people explore the county’s cherry orchards and state parks. At Northport, at the tip of the peninsula, ferries run between the mainland and Washington Island, crossing a channel French sailors nicknamed Porte des Morts or “Death’s Door” for the large number of shipwrecks swept up in the currents.
But right before arriving at Death’s Door, travelers are thrown for a curve—or fifteen to be more specific. An unusually twisty stretch of Highway 42, built in the early 1930s, has baffled visitors for decades. Who designed this surreal stretch of road? All clues would seem to point to the well-known Danish-American landscape architect Jens Jensen, so much so that locals have even nicknamed it, “Jensen’s Road.” And while Jensen did plenty for Door County, from founding a local school to helping layout parks, it turns out the story of Highway 42 is as full of twists as the road itself.. Read more here
