Perched along Highway 42 in Ellison Bay, within the town of Liberty Grove at the northern tip of Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula, Summer Camp Antiques and Gifts is built around a simple idea: a cabin, cottage, or lake house deserves furnishings with a past. The shop fills its floor with vintage and antique finds sourced for a Door County audience, meaning much of what greets visitors leans nautical and lake-inspired, including weathered buoys, ship’s wheels, rope-wrapped mirrors, driftwood-style furniture, and framed prints of sailboats and shoreline scenes sitting alongside general antique furniture, glassware, and small collectibles. Because the inventory is one-of-a-kind by nature, no two visits turn up the same shelf of merchandise, and the owners describe their pricing philosophy as aiming for quality pieces at accessible cost rather than gallery-level markups.
Summer Camp Antiques and Gifts sits at 11996 Highway 42 in Ellison Bay, one of the small harbor communities strung along the Door County shoreline between Ephraim and Gills Rock. The peninsula’s tourist season brings a steady stream of cottage owners and vacationers looking to furnish or decorate a second home, and the shop leans into that seasonal rhythm, positioning itself as a place to find a keepsake that captures the character of the area rather than a generic souvenir. Visitors can call ahead at 920-854-8081, and the business also keeps an active presence on Facebook and Instagram where new arrivals are posted between shop visits, useful for anyone tracking a specific style of vintage decor before making the drive up the peninsula.
The shop keeps seasonally adjusted hours typical of a Door County retailer built around visitor traffic, open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a shorter Sunday window from noon to 2 p.m., and Mondays closed. That schedule rewards planning a stop as part of a broader Door County day trip, pairing a morning drive up the peninsula with an afternoon browse through the shop’s changing selection of vintage furniture and nautical-themed gifts. One distinguishing detail of the business is its openness to buying as well as selling: owners of estates, cottages being cleared out, or individual pieces of vintage furniture and glassware are invited to bring items in, which is part of how the shop maintains a constantly rotating, one-of-a-kind stock rather than a static showroom that looks the same season after season.
For anyone furnishing a lake home or simply hunting for a distinctive piece of Door County memorabilia, Summer Camp Antiques and Gifts offers a curated, ever-changing selection of vintage furniture, nautical decor, and antique gifts drawn from the surrounding peninsula community, priced to be collected rather than merely displayed. Summer Camp Antiques and Gifts in Ellison Bay is a Door County shop specializing in one-of-a-kind vintage, nautical, and antique furnishings for cabins, cottages, and lake homes, open Tuesday through Saturday with a limited Sunday window and a standing invitation for sellers to bring in their own estate and vintage finds.
