#algoma

The randomizer has sent me somewhere that looks, at first, almost suspiciously well behaved.

Kewaunee County, Wisconsin sits along the western shore of Lake Michigan, just southeast of Green Bay and immediately south of the much better-known Door County peninsula. About 20,800 people live here today, spread among farmland, small towns and roughly 30 miles of lakeshore. The county seat is Kewaunee; its largest city is Algoma, population about 3,200. U.S. Census Bureau data puts median household income at about $82,700, somewhat above Wisconsin as a whole.

This is dairy country, farming country, manufacturing country, fishing country and, along the lake, increasingly vacation country. Agriculture remains conspicuous enough that a drive inland quickly becomes an inventory of barns, silos and improbable expanses of corn. The 2022 Census of Agriculture still treats Kewaunee as a substantial agricultural county, while local tourism promotion leans heavily on fishing, beaches, trails and the Lake Michigan waterfront.

In other words, this is not primarily some sleepy retirement colony that happens to have flowers.

There is real economic machinery underneath the hydrangeas.

And yet, after wandering around Kewaunee County on Street View, the machinery was not what stayed with me.

What stayed with me was a man in a Rolling Stones shirt standing astride a bicycle with two dogs.

Quick facts

• County: Kewaunee County, Wisconsin