Door County is the thumb of Wisconsin, extending into Lake Michigan between Green Bay's waters and the open lake. It has been a retreat for the wealthy since the 1890s, when Chicago's industrial elite discovered that the peninsula's cherry orchards, limestone bluffs, and fishing villages provided the ideal backdrop for pretending they didn't make their money in the same industries that were poisoning the city they'd left behind. The tradition continues. Door County in 2200 is a gated peninsula — accessible only by the single bridge at Sturgeon Bay or by private watercraft — and its resident population has arranged things so that the gate stays closed to anyone who can't demonstrate a reason to be there that the residents find acceptable.

The Sturgeon Bay checkpoint is operated by the Peninsula Governance Association, a private authority chartered under an Axiom subsidiary's environmental protection franchise. The charter designates Door County as a 'Natural Heritage Preservation Zone,' which sounds ecological and is economic: the preservation mandate limits development, restricts population density, and — most importantly — provides a legal framework for controlling who enters and who doesn't. The screening process evaluates financial status, tier rating, and 'environmental compatibility assessment,' which is a phrase that means whatever the checkpoint operator decides it means. Rejection rates hover around 60% for walk-up visitors. Residents with property receive automatic access. The Φ40 million average property value ensures the resident population is self-selecting.

Behind the checkpoint, Door County is eerily beautiful. The cherry orchards that once defined the landscape have been replaced by engineered agroforestry — biomodified trees that produce fruit, filter air, and generate more atmospheric oxygen per hectare than any comparable ecosystem in the Corridor. The lakefront is clean — genuinely clean, maintained by water treatment systems that process the entire peninsula's shoreline. The villages look like villages: small buildings, narrow roads, the architecture of a rural community preserved in amber and maintained by people whose net worth would qualify them for sovereign residential status. It is the most peaceful place in the western Corridor, and the peace is purchased, enforced, and available exclusively to those who can afford it.

The other Door County — the one the Governance Association would prefer not to discuss — exists in the peninsula's interior and its northern tip. Survivalist communities, off-grid settlements, and people who came to Door County not for the wealth but for the isolation have established themselves in the dense forest that covers the peninsula's spine. These communities predate the Governance Association's charter and exist in a legal gray zone: they don't meet the residency financial requirements, but they also don't generate the kind of problems that would justify the cost of removing them. The result is a dual society — the lakefront wealth and the forest independence — coexisting on a narrow peninsula with almost no interaction, like two species occupying the same habitat in different ecological niches.