Cardy Site

The Cardy Site in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin is a Paleo-Indian campsite, and the oldest known archaeology site on the Door Peninsula. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.^[1]

Cardy Site
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location	322 W. Spruce Street, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin
NRHP reference No.	10000197
Added to NRHP	April 19, 2010

History

Around 11,000 years ago, just at the end of the last ice age, migrating Paleo-Indian hunters camped at this site, probably following large game in the tundra-like zone near the retreating glacier.^[2] At this location they chipped chert brought from as far as Moline, Illinois into fluted points and other tools.^[3]

In 1878 the Cardy family began farming that spot, and began turning up chipped stone implements. In the 1950s a young Daniel Cardy, studying at UW-Madison, realized that the points the family found looked like Clovis points. Archaeologists at Madison told him this was unlikely, since Door County was still covered by an ice sheet at the time of the Clovis culture. In 2003 archaeologists excavated sample pits the Cardy property, turning up more chipped stone tools and discarded flakes. The tools had Gainey points, closely related to Clovis, placing their creation around 9000 BCE.^[4]

As the city of Sturgeon Bay expanded, part of the site was developed and due to the disturbance of the soil is no longer considered useful for archeological research.^[5][6] The remaining, undeveloped portion of the site was protected by the Cardy family beginning in 1960, added to the Wisconsin State Register of Historic Places in 2009, and today belongs to The Archaeological Conservancy. It is open to the public^[7] and listed as a point of interest near the Ice Age Trail.^[8]

Further reading

• Pushing Back Time in Wisconsin, Mammoth Trumpet, Volume 19, Number 1, December 2003, pages 15–18 (pages 16–19 of the pdf)
• Life During The End Of The Ice Age: The Cardy site could inform archaeologists about how humans dealt with a challenging environment., American Archaeology Vol. 14, No. 3, Fall 2010, page 46 (page 48 of the pdf)
• Late Paleo-Indian Period Lithic Economies, Mobility, and Group Organization in Wisconsin by Ethan Adam Epstein, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, December 2016, page 52 (page 66 of the pdf) and pages 156–164 (pages 156–178 of the pdf)
• Lithic Materials and Paleolithic Societies, edited by Brian Adams and Brooke S. Blades, Hoboken, New Jersey: Blackwell, 2009, Chapter 20: "Clovis and Dalton: Unbounded and Bounded Systems in the Midcontinent of North America" by Brad Koldehoff and Thomas J. Loebel, section on "Clovis: unbounded land use", part 10. Cardy, page 277