Ephraim dates to 1853, and 34% of its homes were built before 1940
7 places in town are on the National Register, among them a historic district with 6 buildings. Below: 4 old photos and papers, maps from 1960 on, and the census since 1920.
The village was founded in 1853 by the Reverend Andreas Iverson as a Moravian Church community. The steeples of the Ephraim Moravian Church and the Free Evangelical Lutheran Church-Bethania Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Congregation are the landmarks of the village as seen from Eagle Harbor. The home of Reverend Iverson, as well as the Anderson Store, the Anderson Barn and History Center, the Pioneer Schoolhouse and the Goodletson log cabin are preserved by the Ephraim Historical Foundation and open to visitors as museums. The Ephraim Historical Foundation also offers walking tours of the village.
Passages that mention Ephraim, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Door county, Wisconsin, together with biographies of nearly seven hundred families, and mention of 4,000 persons ..1881 · page 52Read the page →
Read the text
I first landed in Door county at Sturgeon Bay, October, 1852, and settled on what is now known as E. C. Daniel's place, where T resided for eight months. The Government sold the land, and j tore down my house, loaded it into a boat, and came to Ephraim. This was then such a dense forest that, with axe in hand, I had to step ashore and clear a place to unload the boat Rev. A. M, Iverson, now of Fort Howard, was one of the first settlers in this place, and the first town Superintendent of schools, He was also pastor of the United Breth-
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Ephraim, 1853 to 1994
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
In 1853, according to Wikipedia’s history of the town. Ephraim’s post office opened in 1861, and the census of 1920 counted 196 people here.
What is on the National Register in Ephraim?
7 listings: 6 buildings, among them the Ephraim Moravian Church (listed 1985, the first), and 1 historic district, the Anderson Dock Historic District, with 6 contributing buildings. 16 historic buildings in all.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (13), Wikidata (5), the National Register of Historic Places (7), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
1916
2011
2011
2011
2011
2011
2011
2008
2007
2004
