Why Sheboygan is My Home Away from Home
As a travel writer and speaker, people often ask me what my favorite place is, or which destination surprised me the most. I usually start with the standard "that's like choosing a favorite child" answer. And then I inevitably say Sheboygan.
I fell in love with Sheboygan on my first visit in August of 2021. Since then, I've visited so many times Google thinks I live there. When Photos did my 2025 round-up video, it showed the town as my home instead of where I actually live in northern Illinois.
I fell in love with Sheboygan on my first visit
It's an understandable assumption. Last year I traveled 93 days. Twenty-seven of them were in Sheboygan.
It feels like home. I have my favorite stores. My favorite restaurants. My favorite bookstore. And some of my favorite people.
Why do I love it so much? Let me count the ways.
1. the arts
As the daughter of an artist, I was raised to appreciate creativity. Sheboygan has oodles of it.
Murals and sculptures fill Eighth Street in downtown Sheboygan. Every block seems to turn up something new. Anchoring it all is the Weill Center, a 1,150-seat theater that opened in 1928 as an "atmospheric" movie palace that was restored to its original Spanish Colonial Revival glory in 2001. Step inside and you're in a Spanish garden under a starry-sky ceiling. It's now in the middle of a $13 million expansion that will add a new lobby, a rooftop patio, and community spaces, slated to wrap in late 2026.
A couple blocks away is the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, a nationally regarded institution that champions self-taught artists and artist-built environments. Exhibitions rotate throughout the year, so there’s always something new. Pro tip: make your first stop the bathrooms. All of them. They’re also works of art.
Another favorite spot is the Art Preserve, JMKAC's companion site about four miles west of downtown on a 38-acre stretch along the Sheboygan River. It houses entire artist-made worlds under one roof and was the brainchild of the late Ruth Kohler. Where else can you see sculptures made of chicken bones?
Managed by the Kohler Foundation is the James Tellen Woodland Sculpture Garden, where folk artist James Tellen spent the last fifteen years of his life casting more than thirty concrete figures (saints, woodland creatures, Abraham Lincoln splitting logs) and arranging them in lifelike tableaux on his family's summer property.
2. history
History buffs will find plenty of stories to dive into.
The Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, designated in 2021, sits right offshore, protecting some of the best-preserved shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. You can see one of them on dry land: the Lottie Cooper, a 19th-century schooner whose recovered timbers are displayed in Deland Park.
The Sheboygan County Historical Society Museum is a campus of restored buildings that walks you through the region's German and Eastern European past, including a log cabin, a cheese factory, and a country church. And on the south side of the city, in a quiet park, the Sheboygan Indian Mound Park preserves effigy mounds built more than a thousand years ago.
3. Shopping
I’ve often said I’m not a shopper. Unless I’m in Sheboygan. Suddenly I’m whipping out the credit card and shouting “Take all my money!”
For skin care, Olivü 426 is my go-to. Their whipped olive lotion is luxurious without breaking the bank. One of my favorite things about it is you can choose your own scent. My personal favorite? Agave nectar. Their lip balm is worth the drive, and is how Caitlin Brotz got her start.
Another place worth the drive? WordHaven Bookstore. I don’t know how CJ does it, but every time I’m there they’ve got another few books I simply must have. You can buy local art, join a book club, stock your shelves with finds from the used book collection in the basement, and so much more. As if that weren’t enough, they’ve got not one but two shop pups.
Looking for clothes and accessories? Don’t miss TLC Casuals. It’s another place where I always find something perfect, including this hummingbird purse. At first I didn’t buy it, but I returned because I decided I deserved an incentive to finish my seventh novel. (Spoiler: that beauty is mine!)
If you’re feeling creative, or want to, don’t miss Hello Happiness. This rabbit’s warren is a thrift store of craft goodness. Finds I’ve snagged include fifty-cent crochet hooks and ten dollars for a box filled with stationery ephemera, including an ink pad and stamps.
And during the warmer months, don’t miss the farmers market, especially if you love flowers. Several members of the local Hmong community operate stalls selling gorgeous arrangements.
Stroll up and down 8th Street and you’ll find even more.
4. the outdoors
A few miles south of the city, Kohler-Andrae State Park spans nearly 1,000 acres of sand dunes, pine forest, and wetlands along two miles of Lake Michigan shoreline. The signature Dunes Cordwalk runs through the dunes on wooden planks, parallel to the lake.
Bookworm Gardens is a botanical garden divided into more than seventy themed sections, each one inspired by a children's book. You'll find a covered wagon from Little House in the Big Woods, the barn from Charlotte's Web, a treehouse for The Magic Tree House, and a Hansel and Gretel cottage among them. It's built for kids, but adults wander out smiling too. (Including this one.)
Sheboygan has more beaches than just Kohler-Andrae. Deland Park anchors North Beach, with sandy shoreline, a playground, and volleyball courts. South of the Sheboygan River, South Beach runs nearly a mile alongside Blue Harbor Resort down to King Park. One of my favorite things to do is watch the sunrise over Lake Michigan from the resort’s Adirondack chairs. Another is to sit in the same spot to watch the surfers, because if you didn’t know, Sheboygan’s the freshwater surfing capital of the world.
5. the food
THE FOOD.
I don't know how a town of 50,000 has this many good places to eat. It’s Wisconsin, so of course you can get some stellar cheese curds, and if you’re an encased meats fan, Sheboygan’s the bratwurst capital of the world.
But it’s more than those staples.
You can smell Black Pig–in the best way possible–the closer you get to the restaurant. And it smells like bacon. I’ve never had a bad meal there, and have had some of my favorites. If you like your cocktails, be sure to get their signature Oat Fashioned, garnished with bacon, of course.
If you love Italian, you’ll love Trattoria Stefano. It’s been serving regional Italian since 1994, when a town better known for bratwurst suddenly had house-made pasta. Across the street, Il Ritrovo turns out certified Neapolitan pizza, one of the first in the country to earn the designation. Field to Fork is where to go for a tasty breakfast or lunch from a menu built on what local farmers brought in that morning. Stefano's Slo Food Market is the newest, with fresh-baked goods, a butcher counter, and cheese that is fitting for Wisconsin.
5. the Lake
All of the above are enough to make Sheboygan stand out. But add sailing, surfing, and beachcombing to the mix and it becomes something extraordinary.
If you’ve never surfed, you can take lessons. If you’ve never sailed, they’ll teach you. And if all you want to do is sit back and watch that sunrise while pelicans skim the surface, you can do that, too.
When someone asks me which place surprised me the most? I still hesitate. Then I still say Sheboygan.
So no, I don’t live there, but I could, and maybe, someday I will. And I bet it’ll still surprise me.
Theresa L. Goodrich is an Emmy-winning author and content creator with a penchant for storytelling and a keen eye. As the force behind The Local Tourist, she’s dedicated to telling in-depth stories of magnificent, quirky, and unique places. She’s slightly obsessed with travel and history and has turned these passions into multiple books, including Menace at the Marina, a cozy mystery set in Sheboygan. When she’s not writing or on the road, she’s cooking and planning her next trip to the Malibu of the Midwest.
