Williamsonville was a Euroamerican settlement in Door County founded by the Williamson family in 1869 along the Door County State Road opened in 1867 between Green Bay and Sturgeon Bay. By 1871 it had a steam-powered shingle mill using wood from nearby pine forests and cedar swamps, a boarding house, a blacksmith shop, eight houses, ten acres of cleared farmland, and a population of 76 men, women, and children. For ten days before October 8, 1871, residents fought small blazes and set back-fires to protect the town, but a strong wind that evening fanned the fires and spread sparks until all of Williamsonville’s buildings burned. People sheltered in a potato patch south of town, in the well, and under wet blankets in beds of ash, yet 59 residents died, along with 16 horses, five oxen, and 38 hogs. The Peshtigo Fire, which occurred the same day as the Chicago Fire, destroyed one million acres of farms, forests, sawmills, and small towns in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, including Williamsonville, and remains the most destructive forest fire in American history. Williamsonville was never rebuilt. Later reports said the site still showed partial foundations of the boarding house, well, and mill, the location of the potato patch, and many charred tree stumps, and archaeological investigations uncovered parts of the mill and several houses and outbuildings.