Green Bay - Wisconsin - Culture

Green Bay reaped one last benefit from the 19th-century timber clearance - a pulp and paper industry which has made the city the ‘Tissue Capital of the World." Three of the area’s top 20 industries are paper mills employing upwards of 6,300 workers. Around that paper industry have grown a satellite paper converting industry and a paper milling machine industry. Two of these top 20 industries employ 1,900 workers. The three expanding general hospitals in the area have rapidly overtaken the paper industries as the area’s top employers, employing close to 4,800 workers. In part because the area is a medical center for North-eastern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, two major health insurance companies are based in the county. Rapid growth of the two firms provides employment for 3,400 people.

The Port of Green Bay and Austin Straubel International Airport are international points of entry to the area, which is also served by several railroads with connections to cross-country rail service, and a good highway network. The F.K. Bemis International Center on the St. Norbert College campus is becoming another eye on the world.

Brown County has become the state’s fourth largest wholesale, retail and service sales hub. The Green Bay Public School system, Brown County, the City of Green Bay, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the industries of the Oneida Tribe of Indians also rank in the top level of employers.

Farming, the production of cheese and some light manufacturing also help to maintain a stable workforce within the community and keep the unemployment level below the national level. Green Bay is the largest meatpacking center east of the Mississippi, and one of the top convention centres in the Midwest.

Contrary to rumour, Green Bay does not have two seasons, winter and Fourth of July. The winters are not the coldest in the nation and the summers are not the hottest. Spring does come a little late sometimes and fall often gets a head start. But both seasons are delightful in Green Bay. By January the ice is solid enough for ice fishing, and fish shanties can be left in place until the end of March, January's average high temperature is 24 degrees Fahrenheit and the average low is 7 degrees. Average yearly precipitation is 28 inches, with a snowfall total of 45 inches figured in. Last freeze is supposed to be mid-April, but most people wait till the end of May to plant their gardens.
Those harbingers of spring, dandelions and mosquitoes, show up in late April, but Green Bay can have snow or 90 degree temperatures in May, along with lake flies that temporarily make driving hazardous. Fall is when the birds begin flocking and the pollen and mould counts are high. The fall colours peak the first week in October, when there may even be trace of snow to promise the winter.

The city is famous for its professional football team, the Green Bay Packers, which it has supported since 1919. Few cities can be as closely associated with a sports team as Green Bay is with the foot-balling Packers: 108 miles north of Milwaukee, it's the smallest city in the US to have a professional sports franchise and the only one to own it.

Cotton House, restored within Heritage Hill State Park, is one of the best examples of Greek revival architecture in the Midwest. The National Railroad Museum exhibits a wide collection of locomotives and equipment. The Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame celebrates the dynastic years of the 1960s when the Pack won Super bowls I and II, as well as such stars of today as Reggie White and Brett Favre. Stuffed with hands-on displays, movie theaters and memorabilia, the museum offers more than enough to satisfy any football fan.

Also in this busy but not particularly attractive port, pride of place at the National Railroad Museum goes to the 1.1 million-ton 1941 Union Pacific Big Boy locomotive, one of many such trains which served Green Bay's still-enormous freight depot. Wisconsin's biggest casino is Oneida Bingo & Casino. Tribal history, and the way in which profits from blackjack, video poker and bingo have improved education, social and health facilities, are examined at the Oneida Nation Museum.