Copyright 2006 Journal Sentinel Inc.
By DENNIS MCCANN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
EPHRAIM, Wis.— The old village fire station is one of the most distinctive structures on one of the most enjoyable highways in Wisconsin, stone-faced, a bit squat but sturdy, too, the way it appears to brace the falling hillside with its big-shouldered presence. If you’ve ever driven through Ephraim on Highway 42 you have seen it, at least if that drive was after 1934 when the station became the first dedicated to fire service in northern Door. Even with pretty blue Eagle Harbor grasping for your attention across the road, the station would be hard to miss.
“Well,” said Niles Weborg, Ephraim’s fire chief, “it is kind of identifiable. We call it the cave.”
Not dismissively, of course. They like the old station, even if it was replaced some time back by a modern new garage with room for bigger trucks and more advanced equipment.
But the cave was just fine when the village fire fleet consisted of one new 1934 pumper, also the first in northern Door and a major advance over the department’s early equipment, a wagon pulled by horses and loaded with barrels of water, brooms and whatever else men of the village might put to use against wild fires - at least, if the horse was faster than the fire was wild.
Later there was a Model A roadster with attached tank, which was faster, and a Dodge truck with twin tanks, but when a volunteer force was formally organized in 1930, the village needed a real station and real fire truck to house in it.
And so they got them, a station of native stone and metal handwork designed by architect William Bernhard, a sometime Ephraim resident who designed many other Door County buildings still standing today, including the Ephraim Village Hall, the village Visitor Center and the Door County Museum in Sturgeon Bay. The building was designed so that rainwater from the hillside behind ran into a cistern in the station for use in fighting fires.
Today, the old truck needs a new engine and the old station needs a lot of things. And it looks like both will get what they need, now that there are plans to bring both out of retirement.
A wife and a job
Niles Weborg, out of the well-known Weborg fishing family from Gills Rock, married into the Ephraim Volunteer Fire Department 47 years ago in June when he married Joan Sohns. Her father was then chief, so for Niles a helmet and a spot on the hose line came with his wife’s hand.
“I married her and joined the force at the same time,” he said.
Fighting fires in a small town with all volunteers was a lot less complicated then. It’s a popular joke, for Weborg and other volunteers, to boast of never having lost a basement, but in fact they take fire protection seriously. Training today is so much more advanced than a decade or two ago, even in a village where the annual fire budget wouldn’t keep one big city firefighter in modern gear. On the day I was in Ephraim, volunteer Mike Skippon was waiting for the arrival of more sophisticated breathing attachments, and he told me more about extricating victims from crashed cars than I’d ever imagined mattered.
Weborg became chief in 1981, one of a number of positions he has held in Ephraim through the years. Today the department is part of a combined force with firefighters from Gibraltar and Baileys Harbor and it is harder to find volunteers, not just here but everywhere in small towns, but Weborg is still active. Granted, he was wintering in Florida when we talked recently by telephone, but it was about Fire Department business and he was, after all, getting ready to return to Wisconsin and get back to work.
Because there is much to do. Beginning this spring Weborg is leading a drive to raise between $125,000 and $140,000 or more to renovate the damp old station on the highway and to convert it to a museum of fire fighting in Ephraim and all of Door. That will require a new electrical system, a heating and air conditioning unit to reduce humidity, new metal overhead doors with glass panels so passers-by can enjoy the museum when no one is there and other touches. Additionally, the old ’34 pumper will get a new engine and serve as Exhibit A, along with other memorabilia Weborg has collected.
A tragic first
“It’s a historic building that I feel, if there wouldn’t be anything done about it, (it will deteriorate further.) It is something that needs to be done,” he said.
“I knew we were going to do this, but I didn’t know it would take this to (get it started).”
“This” was the death of his son, Bill. As Niles had married into the Fire Department, Bill had been born into it, as was Bill’s brother, Scott, who both grew up to serve in their father’s department. In 2004, Bill, a married father of three, collapsed and died of a heart attack while responding to a boat fire, becoming the first Door County firefighter to die in the line of duty. On the day of his funeral, Bill was carried to the cemetery on a fire engine, with 130 or more uniformed firefighters in attendance, and Weborg only wishes the ’34 pumper had been working that day to do the sad duty.
So there is now more reason to do what he had long wanted to do, to develop the museum both as a way of preserving a piece of Door County history and of honoring the volunteers who through the years have given so much.
Especially Bill, who gave the most. His uniform would be one of the exhibits.
The fund drive for restoring the old station will be handled by the Ephraim Historical Foundation, P.O. Box 165, Ephraim, WI 54211. For more, visit www.ephraim.org or call (920) 854-9688.