Wisconsin Historical Society Awarded National Park Service Grant to Preserve Underwater Artifacts from Lake Michigan

MADISON, Wis. – The State Historic Preservation Office at the Wisconsin Historical Society is delighted to announce that it was awarded $200,000 to support the documentation and conservation of recovered underwater artifacts from Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. The project is supported by a National Maritime Heritage Grant administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior (Grant Number P23AP01273).

The project, which began in October 2023 and will continue through September 2026, is a partnership between the Society’s Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Office and the Wisconsin Maritime Museum (WMM), located in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to catalog, document, rehouse and preserve the Klopp Collection. This collection of 10,352 artifacts recovered by Allan Klopp contains objects from 41 different historic vessels found mostly in Lake Michigan, making it one of the largest collections of shipwreck artifacts in the Great Lakes region. These artifacts range from personal items to massive anchors which upon the completion of the project will be available to the public to learn about people who lived and worked on these historic vessels, some of which are listed in the State Register of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places.

Since 1993, the Society and the WMM have had a cooperative agreement (MOU) making the WMM a preferred public repository and curatorial partner for the Society’s underwater archaeology collections. This grant will fund a Maritime Collections Specialist to inventory and care for the Klopp Collection and prepare for eventual display, interpretation and digital access to select collections items.

“We are grateful for this opportunity to preserve this collection with our longtime partners at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum,” said Dr. Amy Rosebrough, State Archaeologist and Curator of Archaeology at the Wisconsin Historical Society. “Wisconsin’s waters are time capsules that contain thousands of years of history. The maritime heritage that this collection represents is not just Wisconsin’s, it records patterns of commerce and events of importance to the United States as a whole.  We look forward to helping these items tell the stories of the vessels and people they belong to, and making those stories more accessible to the people of Wisconsin and beyond." 

In addition to using grant funding to rehouse and increase public access to the Klopp Collection, the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Maritime Museum are also establishing a process to fully integrate the organizations’ shipwreck collections procedures. The Maritime Museum serves as a designated repository for maritime heritage items recovered from State of Wisconsin bottomlands, which include items from shipwrecks and other sites in the Great Lakes. “This initiative will increase the maritime museum’s in-house capacity for operations and conservation and strengthen the long-term partnership between our two organizations” said Kevin Cullen, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.

This collaboration has the potential to provide visitors with experiences they can’t find anywhere else: a deep dive into Wisconsin's maritime past through thousands of objects from nationally significant shipwrecks recovered from Lake Michigan. Visitors will now be able to stand toe to toe with a pair of boots that walked the decks of ships that sailed freshwater seas, sit at an elaborate table reassembled from the final journey of a Great Lakes luxury liner, and see history being saved—one delicate piece at a time— through the science and art of object conservation. Grounded in the Society’s and WMM's decades-long history of leading educational efforts around Great Lakes maritime heritage, the documentation, curation, and interpretation of this collection broadens and deepens our reach through new techniques and new ways of storytelling. State and federal laws protect shipwrecks. Divers may not remove artifacts or structures when visiting shipwreck sites, and moving, defacing, displacing, or destroying artifacts or sites is a crime.

About the Wisconsin Historical Society

The Wisconsin Historical Society, founded in 1846, ranks as one of the largest, most active and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, its mission is to help people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. The Wisconsin Historical Society serves millions of people every year through a wide range of sites, programs and services. The Wisconsin Historical Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization, receives grants and private contributions benefitting the Wisconsin Historical Society and administers the membership program. For more information, visit www.wisconsinhistory.org.

About the Wisconsin Maritime Museum

The Wisconsin Maritime Museum connects all people with Wisconsin’s waterways, by engaging and educating the public about the Great Lakes, Wisconsin’s maritime history, Wisconsin’s World War II submarines and USS Cobia.