A Visit To The Port Of Milwaukee
My hometown has a long, fascinating maritime history that deserves to be remembered. "Maritime Milwaukee", published by Arcadia Publishing in its "Images of America" series, offers a historical, photographic tour of shipping activity on Milwaukee's port and on its rivers beginning in the early 19th Century to the present. The book is written by the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society and edited by Charles Sterba. Founded in 1959, the Society is affiliated with the Milwaukee Public Library. It has done an invaluable job in preserving the City's maritime history and making it accessible through, among other ways, this book and through a large database of photographs. This book offers a tour through time and pictures of maritime Milwaukee. The interspersed textual and introductory material help the reader to understand the story.
Milwaukee's harbor is located on a lakefront peninsula in the southern part of the city known as Jones Island, which also is known as the home of the city sanitation plant. Most of "Maritime Milwaukee" covers the development of the port at Jones Island. It is a long, varied, and interesting history. The book opens with rare photographs of the early harbor and of ships docking in Milwaukee in the 19th Century. The most fascinating part of the early story involves fishing and squatting rather than shipping. Beginning in 1892, a group of squatters from Kaszuby on the Polish-German border immigrated to Milwaukee and took up residence on Jones Island where they became fishermen. The community remained on Jones Island until the late 1930s. The Kaszuby people had never secured title to the land they occupied, and the city moved and evicted them to further the development of the harbor. There community streets, rickety homes and fishing shanties, and fishing boats and gear play a prominent role in the book.
The lake and the rivers proved integral to Milwaukee's development as a large, industrial city through the 20th Century. On Jones Island, the city ultimately developed an "inner harbor" at the confluence of Lake Michigan with the Kinnickinnic River and and "outer harbor" consisting of a northern and southern part. "Maritime Milwaukee" chronicles the different developments of the various parts of the harbor. The inner harbor was home to a large steel mill and other heavy industry. Many industries also used the port to dock their fleets over the winter. The book includes many photographs of large ships that visited the port over the years, together with photographs of the harbor and its heavy equipment, the railroads, and the industries and storage areas that the ships serviced. It offers an almost poetic glimpse of industry and the water.
The Outer Harbor developed in two parts, north and south. The north harbor did not become a large port. It became home to passenger and ferry vessels that crossed Lake Michigan but that do so no longer. It also included an early airfield and related facilities. Today the north harbor is used as a city park and for recreational activities. The southern harbor became a large, functioning port. This book shows the docks, the warehouses, the lighthouses the cranes, and most importantly the large ships that called upon the Port of Milwaukee.
Besides the port, each of the three rivers flow into Lake Michigan developed heavy industrial shipping activity, with riverine traffic receiving considerable attention in "Maritime Milwaukee". I can remember river traffic on the Milwaukee River downtown with the large bridges that would lift on each side to allow vessels to pass. The Menominee River also had a large industrial river traffic. After the mid-20th Century river traffic on the Milwaukee and Menominee Rivers dwindled. But the Kinnickinc River with its connection to the inner harbor still sees substantial industrial river traffic.
The book concludes with photographs by editor Charles Sterba of shipping activity in the 21st Century in Milwaukee which focuses on the inner harbor and the Kinnikinnic River. Although some of the ports and rivers are no longer active, shipping traffic by volume has continued to increase and is likely to grow even larger in the future.
I lived in Milwaukee until 1970, and this book brought back memories of the city, the lake, the rivers, the industry, and the ships. I learned a great deal that I hadn't known, particularly about the Kaszuby squatters and about the structure of the Jones Island harbor. This book will appeal to readers who love large ships and harbors and their history. It is also an excellent book for readers interested in the Great Lakes and in the history of Milwaukee. The Wisconsin Marine Historical Society deserves praise of its work in preserving this history, as does "Images of America" for its long series of local American histories.
