Plumb—•Early Harbor History of Wisconsin 
187 
EARLY HARBOR HISTORY OF WISCONSIN. 
R. G. Plumb. 
The State of Wisconsin contains many of the most important 
harbors of the Great Lakes. Within its boundaries at sixteen 
different points the United States government has undertaken 
improvement and there are, besides, numerous bays and coves, 
where improvements of a purely local nature have been made 
by individuals. The sixteen government harbors are at Ke¬ 
nosha, Racine, Milwaukee, Port Washington, Sheboygan,, Mani¬ 
towoc, Two Rivers, Kewaunee, Algoma, Sturgeon Bay, Green 
Bay, Pensaukee, Oconto, Marinette, Ashland and Superior. 
There is also the harbor at Bayfield, that enjoys the distinction 
of being one of the few where engineering skill was not required 
to aid nature and where artificial improvement, beyond a few 
private docks, was totally unnecessary, since deep water ex¬ 
tended up to the very docks. 
The participation of the national government in the con¬ 
struction of harbor improvements is a matter of historical devel¬ 
opment. As such it is but a subsidiary phase of the general 
history of internal improvements, and is marked by the gradual 
augmentation of national power, due partly to legislative action 
and partly to judicial construction. It was a fundamental 
English doctrine that rivers and bays were the king’s property 
and this theory the American Colonies adopted, going so far as 
to. claim the right to lease streams and inlets. By the Articles 
of Confederation Congress was given no power over navigation 
so that the control of the separate colonies continued. It Was 
the inequality of the tonnage dues under this system that was 
one of the chief causes leading to the adoption of the Federal 
