Completion of the Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan Ship Canal in 1878 transformed the maritime history of Sturgeon Bay and the Door Peninsula by creating a shorter, safer water route between Green Bay and Lake Michigan. The project was long championed by Joseph Harris, Sr., a local newspaper editor who began advocating a canal soon after arriving in 1855 and became known as the Father of the Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan Ship Canal. After lobbying, extensive work, and a change in location, a state charter was granted in 1864 to the Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan Ship Canal and Harbor Company, whose partners included William B. Ogden. The canal reduced the trip from Green Bay to Milwaukee or Chicago by more than 150 miles and avoided the dangerous Death's Door passage, though Harris's hoped-for town of Harrisburg never materialized and he never profited from selling property there. Construction began on July 8, 1872, was delayed for three years by the Depression of 1873, resumed in 1877, and on June 28, 1878, the final barrier was removed to join the waters of Sturgeon Bay and Lake Michigan. In 1879 the three-masted schooner America became the first loaded ship towed through, and over the next four years the canal was deepened and improved for regular safe passage. Traffic grew from 415 ships in 1882 to 3,949 ten years later, with local tug owners competing to tow vessels, sometimes in groups of as many as six sailing ships. Because profits failed to match expenses, the private investors sold the canal in 1893 to the United States government, after which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintained and expanded the waterway and its navigation channel through Sturgeon Bay. The original canal through the isthmus measured 7,400 feet long, 100 feet wide, and 6 feet deep, while the improved modern waterway extends 7 miles and is marked by jetties and three lighthouses. Large freighters no longer use the canal routinely, but in January and March visitors still watch ships entering and leaving for winter layup at Bay Shipbuilding Company.