Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Manitowoc, WI

Manitowoc is a city on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Manitowoc River and the county seat of Manitowoc County, nicknamed Wisconsin's Maritime Capital and the Clipper City.

The name Manitowoc comes from the Ojibwe word manidoowaak, often translated as dwelling of the great spirit or spirit-land; the Menominee ceded the land to the United States in the 1836 Treaty of the Cedars.

Manitowoc was chartered as a village on March 6, 1851, became county seat in 1853, and was incorporated as a city on March 12, 1870.

Shipbuilding began in Manitowoc in 1847, when Joseph Edwards launched the schooner Citizen, starting an industry that made the city famous for schooners and fast clipper ships.

During World War II the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company, which had never built a submarine before, produced 28 Gato- and Balao-class submarines for the U.S. Navy between 1941 and 1945, employing some 7,000 workers including more than 600 women welders.

The first Manitowoc-built submarine, USS Peto, was launched on April 30, 1942, and the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in the city now preserves the similar USS Cobia, a National Historic Landmark that visitors can tour and even sleep aboard.

In December 2022 the National Park Service designated Manitowoc one of the nation's American World War II Heritage Cities for its wartime production.

On September 5, 1962, a 20-pound piece of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 4 crashed into North 8th Street in front of the Rahr-West Art Museum; a brass ring embedded in the pavement marks the exact spot, and the city celebrates with the annual Sputnikfest.

Manitowoc is the Wisconsin terminus of the S.S. Badger, the last coal-fired passenger steamship in the United States, which carries U.S. Route 10 across Lake Michigan to Ludington, Michigan.

The waters off Manitowoc are part of the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, designated in 2021 to protect 36 known historic shipwrecks.