Ferdinand Hotz, who became the largest private landholder in Door County in the early 20th century, was born in Germany in 1868 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1884. Hotz settled in Chicago, where he was was a talented and successful custom jewelry designer. He traveled extensively, nationally and internationally, to sell his designs to the wealthy and well-connected in locations including Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Marinette, New York City, Omaha, San Francisco, Seattle, and Spokane.

He never resided in Juddville, but had extensive land holdings there along the Green Bay shore and along the bluff high above the shore. These holdings stretched from Peninsular Players Road southward to at least the south point of Juddville Bay. [Note: the author of this website lives in a home on an Islandview Road lot in Juddville that once was owned by Ferdinand Hotz.]

Hotz first visited Door County in 1905 on a side visit from a business trip to Marinette, Wisconsin. Several years later, he started bringing his family annually to Door County. That is when his purchases of Door County properties began.

Some of the Door County Properties Hotz owned outside of Juddville included: the Gibraltar Orchards on upper Cottage Row, property at the top of the Fish Creek Hill, land along Spring Road including where the Fish Creek Condominiums are currently located and half the valley below, the land that eventually became Newport State Park, and a tract at Mud Lake, He had other holdings around Clark Lake, on the Ellison Bay bluff, and 600 feet of shoreline in Fish Creek which his descendants still own today.

(Source: Apfelbach, G. Leonard. ”Ferdinand Hotz”. Fish Creek Voices – An Oral History of a Door County Village“, edited by Edward and Lois Schreiber, Wm. Caxton, Ellison Bay, 1990, pp. 202 – 204.)