Walking Through History on the Milwaukee River

By Carl Swanson

Guest Contributor - MKE Notebook

There is an urban stretch of the Milwaukee River where history unfolds like one footstep follows another. This five-mile mostly level stroll follows the river upstream on the east bank and returns along the opposite bank. Much of it is in the shade, there are river views, and the possibility of encountering birds, whitetail deer, and even beavers.

North Avenue Dam

Our history begins with the 1835 construction of a dam across the Milwaukee River, so weÕll start our walk there. Direct your GPS to 2135 N. Riverboat Rd., in Milwaukee. Find a parking place anywhere along the curb and head over to the pedestrian bridge crossing the river.

This bridge is built atop the remains of a dam that played a key role in the development of the upper Milwaukee River. The original dam was part of a planned canal between Milwaukee with the Mississippi River. In the end, the canal extended just two miles from here nearly to downtown before its backers threw in the towel in 1866. Adding insult to bankruptcy, the original dam failed that same year and the ensuing wall of water took out several bridges. 

The canal was eventually filled in and is today's Commerce Street. A replacement dam was built in 1891, creating a 2.5-mile-long 82-acre impoundment that became a prime place of leisure and recreation for many Milwaukee's. Swimming schools, beaches, steamboats, boat rentals, swimming schools, and commercial icehouses thrived above the dam. 

The North Avenue dam was partially removed in 1997 to restore natural water levels along much of the urban river. Its foundations now support a pedestrian bridge. Cross the bridge, swing onto the dirt path and head upstream. Glance to the right and you'll see a concrete retaining wall that formed the foundation of Bechstein's Swimming School, a beehive of activity on warm summer days before World War I. 

North Avenue Bridge

Ahead is the North Avenue bridge. Designed and built in the early 1990s, it is more utilitarian than beautiful but it does include ornamental railings and streetlights and cast concrete arches in a nod to the neoclassical details of its 1921 predecessor. That bridge crossed the river on three broad concrete arches and was designated a civil engineering landmark. When it came time to replace the bridge in the 1980s, Milwaukee newspapers ran a legal notice from the city offering to sell the bridge on the condition the buyer disassemble the 1,385-foot-long structure, rebuild it elsewhere, and maintain it forever. To sweeten the deal, the city offered to pay $1.3 million of the relocation costs. An accompanying newspaper story explained the notice was a formality mandated by the viaduct's landmark status, and of course the monolithic concrete bridge was impossible to move. It was reduced to rubble and trucked away.

O'Conner Boatyard

Standing under a still-earlier bridge in the 1880s, one would find a boat rental business tucked under its east end. Phillip O'Connor, a former ships carpenter, built a flotilla of rowboats and, later, a trio of 75-passenger steamboats. For 25 cents, one could rent a rowboat for a half-day. Or, for 15 cents, take a seat aboard one of the steam launches for a ride between the North Avenue and Capitol Drive bridges.

One of O'Conner's steamboat captains was his own son, Frederick, who became a fully licensed river pilot despite being so young he stood on a soapbox to steer. 

The World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 included a fleet of battery-powered 36-foot-long launches. When the exposition closed, O'Connor purchased some of the electric boats, which he recharged by arranging to tap into the streetcar system's power lines. O'Connor died in September 1894. According to his obituary, death resulted from overwork. He was 47 years old.

Continuing north, skirting the edge of the sprawling Wisconsin Paperboard Corp. plant, the river path follows a slight jog. This was Bullhead Bay, back when the river was much wider and deeper. In the 1880s, the bay was home to the two-story clubhouse of Daphne Boat Club. 

Scotty Dore, a man with an alarming sense of humor, was the club's president. He once was rowing with another member and deliberately capsized the craft. As he swam to shore, he heard cries for help. The other man was unable to swim. Scotty swiftly returned and towed the man to safety. On another occasion, Scotty, stepping from a boat at the club's floating dock, noticed another member kneeling at the edge. As he passed, he playfully shoved the man into the river. He went down like a rock. This man, too, was not a swimmer. Scotty dived in and pulled him out. This led to a tongue-in-cheek suggestion Scotty be awarded a medal for saving the lives of the two members. The club closed before World War I, when members were unable to keep up with the building's increasing maintenance needs. 

Daphne Boat Club

National Brake and Electric

A short distance to the north, Rotary Centennial Arboretum is the newest of the city's chain of Milwaukee River parks. Opened in 2013 at a cost of $8.5 million, it is managed by the Urban Ecology Center. It has nearly four miles of trails, outdoor learning areas for school groups and extensive plantings of native trees, shrubs, wildflowers, grasses, and sedges.

The park is atop a two-foot-thick layer of trucked-in soil that caps the lead, arsenic, and other toxic compounds left behind by one of city's largest industrial concerns. Established in 1901, National Brake & Electric Company grew rapidly, eventually employing 1,400. Its 14-acre complex included four main buildings, a large machine shop, a foundry turning out more than one thousand tons of castings a month, an office building and numerous smaller structures. Niels Christensen was the firm's driving force. Witnessing a fatal streetcar accident started him thinking of ways to improve electric railway braking systems. In 1892, he designed and patented a streetcar brake that quickly became the standard around the world. By the early 1900s, orders were pouring into the new factory.

In March 1906, Westinghouse Manufacturing Company purchased a controlling interest in the firm and the plant continued to expand, tripling in size in the first few years of Westinghouse's ownership. By 1918, 1,000 men and women were busy with wartime production of military trucks, heavy-duty lathes, air compressors, and locomotives. 

The Depression sent Westinghouse's profits into a tailspin. Production at the plant ended in 1932. The Milwaukee Journal reported the vast erecting shops contained a sparrow or two; in the foundry, one of the largest in the city, the overhead crane is doing a last creaking dance pulling out more equipment to be melted up.

Riverside Park

The path follows the riverbank upstream through Riverside Park, which was planned in the 1890s by Frederick Law Olmstead's famous landscape design firm. Olmstead designed New York City's Central Park, the U.S. Capitol Grounds in Washington, D.C., and three parks in Milwaukee, Lake, Riverside, and Washington parks. Riverside Park is a shadow of its former self. Linked to Lake Park by East Newberry Boulevard, Olmsted had envisioned carriages visiting the lake, then proceeding down Newberry to Riverside, where the road followed a wooded ravine that sloped down to the Milwaukee River via an underpass below a railroad line. In the 1970s, the ravine and the railroad underpass were filled in to form Riverside High School's athletic field.

River Colony

Just north of the Locust Street bridge, Cambridge Woods Park narrows, squeezed by the Milwaukee River and a former railroad right of way that now hosts the Oak Leaf Trail. Follow the path west of the Oak Leaf Trail to see tightly spaced crumbling concrete foundations along the river bluff, some covered with graffiti, some barely more than rubble piles amid the weeds and wildflowers. This is all that remains of River Colony, one of the most unusual neighborhoods in Milwaukee.

The residents had electrical service, a sewer system, and water from the colony's own well. What they lacked was an easy way in or out. In the winter, they drove their cars across the frozen river and parked at their doorsteps, but in the summer they had to park on Cambridge Avenue, cross Locust Street, descend a flight of wooden stairs to a tiny railroad passenger platform and cross three sets of tracks before finally arriving home. 

In the mid-1960s, residents were forced out of their homes as plans moved forward to build an automotive parkway along the former railroad right of way. Public opposition killed the plan in 1970. By then only the foundations remained of the isolated homes that once lined this section of the river.

The Elephant Tunnel

The path drops down to river level, passing the remnants of a stone-lined tunnel beneath the former railroad. The railroad built the tunnel because it was required to maintain access to existing river recreational or business operations as it built its line through the neighborhood on a high earthen fill. Children growing up on the East Side called it the Elephant Tunnel and warned younger kids to stay away, lest the elephant get them. Built more than a century ago, partly filled in, and heavily vandalized the tunnel remains impressive. 

High Speed Rail

The path swings uphill to join the Oak Leaf Trail. This was once the route of one of the fastest long-distance passenger trains in the world Ñ the Chicago & North Western Railway's 400, a train named after its scheduled running time of 400 minutes over the 400 miles of track between St. Paul and Chicago Ñ including all station stops in between. In 1935, when the train made its first runs, there was nothing faster on rails averaged over such a long distance.  

Powered by mammoth steam locomotives with six-and-one-half-foot-tall main driving wheels, the train was governed by a timetable that set forth strict speed limits for junctions and certain curves but, significantly, set no maximum speed limit for the long straightaways across central Wisconsin. Crews understood they were to operate as fast as necessary to stay on schedule. The railway acknowledged 110 mph running was common.

In 1961, the C&NW petitioned the Interstate Commerce Committee seeking to discontinue the train, which was then losing over $1 million a year. Airlines were faster, and private automobiles were the first choice for most travelers. In 1963, the train made its last run.

Shorewood Amusement Park

Continuing along the Oak Leaf Trail, the athletic fields of River Park are on the right and Hubbard Park is on the left. This area was once a farm that became a summer resort. That sleepy resort (its activities revolved around fishing, strolling the shady paths and drinking spring water thought to have health-giving properties) evolved into a sprawling, boisterous amusement park with thrill rides, motorcycle daredevils and dancing girls. The busy park generated considerable revenue for Milwaukee. Nearby residents who put up with its noise, crowds, and rubbish were irritated this revenue was not earmarked for local improvements. Consequently, in 1900 voters approved a proposal to break away from Milwaukee and establish the independent village of East Milwaukee, renamed Shorewood in 1917.

After paying admission (ten cents for an adult ticket, children five cents), visitors were entertained by a host of rides, including a giant water slide and a roller coaster. The attractions drew thousands of guests each year. In 1917, Shorewood refused to renew Ravenna's operating license, and the park closed. Its thirty-three acres were subdivided, with a single parcel forming today's Hubbard Park.

Capital Drive Bridge

You have a choice of trails. You can continue northwest on the Oak Leaf Trail or you can take the path into the woods on the left. There's a steep scramble downhill to river level, easy enough in dry weather but quite treacherous if its wet. Once safely down, head to the river and glance at the twin stone railroad underpasses that provide access to the park. A path along the river's edge leads to stone stairs coming up to Capitol Drive.

The current Capitol Drive bridge is nothing to write home about. The previous bridge, built in 1927 and made of 20,000 tons of concrete was more graceful and, in a roundabout way, it saved part of the Milwaukee River from being filled in for a riverside roadway.

When the 1927 Capitol Drive bridge was in its planning stages (it replaced a shaky steel truss contraption so narrow there was scarcely room for two vehicles to pass), the city of Milwaukee asked Shorewood to share the cost. The village categorically refused, pointing to its founding charter that set the community's boundary at the water's edge and included no part of the river itself. Milwaukee paid for the bridge but it would remember that piece of historical trivia.

In summer 1931, four years after the new bridge opened, Shorewood started dumping rubble into the river south of Capitol Drive with the intention of narrowing the river by 35 feet to accommodate a planned riverside roadway. Just four days later, Shorewood received a phone call from the state Public Service Commission ordering the village to cease dumping fill in the river. The action followed a joint protest filed with the PSC by Milwaukee city and county officials, who noted Shorewood's village limits extend only to the natural east bank of the Milwaukee River and therefore Shorewood was dumping fill outside of its jurisdiction. The river parkway was never built.

Cross the Capitol Drive bridge, and look for the steps on the southwest side leading down to the river. This is the halfway point in this hike. 

Canoe Clubs

As you walk south along the river, you may notice slabs of concrete and partial foundations along the trail. These are probably the remnants of boathouses belonging to private owners and canoe clubs. Canoeing was a huge sport along the river. A newspaper article from 1912 listed 20 boat clubs on the Upper River with membership totaling around 300. The clubs had names like White Squadron, Pleasant Valley, La Fa Lot, Sun Set, and Shady Nook. These were mainly social clubs, and had a bit of reputation. By the 1920s, newspapers were calling the Milwaukee River between Capitol Drive and North Avenue "Petters' Paradise." In summer 1921, the police department acquired a secondhand but rather sleek motor boat, equipped it with a powerful spotlight and manned the craft with two officers. The boat set to work with then-Chief of Police Jacob Laubenheimer promising immoral conditions would stop within a week.

Though police did not name the boat, young couples interrupted in romantic interludes began calling it "the killjoy." In a rare example of official good humor, Milwaukee police embraced the name. At night, the boat cruised along slowly and quietly, on the lookout for trouble and living up to its name by turning its spotlight on drifting canoes and furtive activities on the river banks. For example, in the early morning hours one Sunday night in June 1925, six people found themselves charged with disorderly conduct.

The Milwaukee Journal reported the incident in a June 15, 1925 article headlined, "Killjoy Tuned Up, Interrupts Three Friendly Couples."

"The youths arrested are members of the Belle Isle Canoe Club. They danced until midnight with their sweethearts, then went out in canoes despite the pouring rain. Irvin Karnatz, commander of the river patrol boat Killjoy, followed the three canoes and saw petting parties which he believed to be disorderly. He gave chase and ordered the canoes to pull to the curb pardon, "bank."

The patrol was also credited for reducing the frequency of nude swimming.

Kern Park

An angled paved path leading to the top the bluff marks the location of Kern Park. The park was then a fairly new addition to the city. The thirty-acre property was formerly the summer residence of the Kern family, who donated the estate to the parks commission in the early 1900s. In 1910, before the city had a chance to do much with its new park, the health commission asked permission to house tuberculosis patients on the former Kern property. The Kern's 20-room mansion was thought to be suitable for use as a hospital. 

Tuberculosis isn't particularly feared today, but in the 19th century it caused more deaths than any other disease. In the early 1900s, a flood of desperately sick people stressed city healthcare systems to the breaking point. The tuberculosis sanitarium opened in Kern Park in October 1911. Patients paid a fee ranging from five to ten dollars per week, although free care was provided to those unable to pay.

In 1911, the annual report of the city park commissioners had this to say about Kern Park:

"Free use of the residence was granted temporarily by the Park Board to the Social Workers Tuberculosis Sanitarium as a convalescent hospital, the building being used by the attendants, the patients sleeping in tents erected about the park. About 25 convalescents were cared for during the winter."

The sanitarium was gone by 1914, when Milwaukee's main tuberculosis hospital opened at the County Grounds in Wauwatosa.

The Lost Park

Continuing south along the river path, Kern Park yields to undeveloped 

Pleasant Valley Park, at the foot of East Concordia Avenue. This was once Blatz Park, one of the city's best-known beer gardens. The band packed up and left a century ago, about the time steamboats stopped calling at the park's landing stage. A little later, the landing stage, refreshment pavilion, cottages and band shell were torn down and the rubble removed. 

As author Tom Tobin described, Blatz Park (Pleasant Valley before 1892) swarmed with picnickers in those days. Troops of large families from St. Casimir's Parish, a mile south, regularly followed a makeshift marching band up Humboldt Avenue to the park, each family pulling a coaster wagon containing a picnic lunch. 

Steam-powered boats, sailing from a dock just above the North Avenue dam, pulled up periodically at the pier and discharged crowds of passengers. The park had a band shell and later a restaurant. There were also cottages.

Getting to Blatz Park was half the fun. The river above the dam was served by excursion steamboats operated by several companies located near the North Avenue dam, including the trio of boats operated by Phillip O'Connor. The steamers could carry up to seventy-five passengers, and a round trip (including stops at Blatz Park and the Wonderland amusement park in Shorewood) took 40 minutes.

The gardens faded around World War I as tastes in entertainment changed. Prohibition, followed by the rise of the automobile, put the final nails in the coffin. 

Few of the younger generation in the city realize that there is a spot in the heart of the city that has such beauty, real estate broker Anthony Grueninger told the Milwaukee Journal. However, all old-time Milwaukeeans will remember the days when Pleasant Valley was the recreation place for thousands of people. ... While father sat in the famous old pavilion as he quaffed a stein of foaming brew and listened to one of the many singing societies which usually gathered there, mother and the children sat or played about under the beautiful trees of the park.

Riverwest Pumping Station

The imposing five-story-tall windowless brick structure at the foot of East Chambers Street is part of the city's water utility. When the Riverside Pumping Station entered service in 1924, its massive pumps set a world record. 

Milwaukee's water supply has been drawn from Lake Michigan since 1874. The North Point Pumping Station was built at the foot of North Avenue on the lake shore to pull water from a tunnel that eventually extended 2,100 feet out into the lake. Although the eight steam-powered pumps at the North Point Station could deliver 126 million gallons of drinking water each day, by 1918 it was clear the rapidly growing city needed a second major pumping station.

Riverside Pumping Station started with the construction of a floodwall, built two feet higher than the maximum recorded flood level. At the same time, a nine-foot-diameter, 7,000-foot-long tunnel was excavated from the lakefront to the new station.

City engineers disagreed over the pumps to be installed in the new plant. Many favored centrifugal pumps, then a relatively new technology rapidly gaining favor. Ultimately the decision was made to order somewhat old-fashioned but well-proven vertical triple expansion steam pumps made by Milwaukee's own Allis-Chalmers.

Three of the gigantic pumps, powered by superheated steam supplied by three coal-fired boilers, were installed in the 59,000-square-foot brick structure. On July 1, 1924, pump no. 1, with a daily capacity of 22 million gallons, went into service. The five-story-tall Allis-Chalmers machine was so perfectly balanced its 100-tons of moving parts operated in eerie silence, save only for the faint, rhythmic clicking of steam valves opening and closing. Tests showed pump no. 1 generated 214.5 million pounds of work for every1,000 pounds of steam it used, setting a new world record for pumping engine economy.

Milwaukee's brand-new Riverside Pumping Station was second to none, and the city was happy to show it off. A visitor's gallery was included in the station's design, and a switch-back sidewalk led down the 90-foot-tall river bluff from Pumping Station Park. In addition to the gigantic boilers and pumps, visitors could see offices, steam-powered generators for the in-house electrical system, automated coal- and ash-handling equipment, and a state-of-the-art machine shop.

In 1968, the fires were dropped in last two operating boilers. Today it is closed off by fences and surrounded by security cameras. Although the facility is more than 100 years old, it is still a major part of the city's water infrastructure and is frequently updated. Today, Riverside Station contains nine electrically driven pumps with a combined capacity of 240 million gallons a day. The pumps are remotely controlled by operators at the Linwood Water Treatment Plant.

Gordon Park Bath House

Crossing under the Locust Street Viaduct, walkers will encounter a concrete retaining wall, with two sets of stairs leading down into a field of tall grass. This is all that remains of the Gordon Park bathhouse, a point of considerable civic pride when it opened one hundred years ago. 

Before building the bathhouse, the city park commission tested the popularity of the swimming area. In 1911, the commission reported, "Six election booths were erected on the riverbank, dressing rooms were partitioned off, and an attendant for the boys and another for the girls, were employed; the man in charge acted as life-saver. This bathing beach and the booths were put in order rather late in the season, but during the 45 days they were in use, 10,792 boys and 508 girls availed themselves of the sport. The advantages the river has over the lake as a bathing beach is that it gets warmer sooner and the temperature remains fairly steady."

Built at a cost of $25,000, the Gordon Park bathhouse opened for swimming in summer 1914. It contained an eating room and more than three hundred lockers, accommodating as many as six hundred swimmers at a time. The bathhouse was also designed for wintertime use by ice skaters.

The bathhouse witnessed many sporting events throughout the years. In January 1926, 30,000 spectators turned out to watch an ice fete (speed skating, ski-jumping and hockey) taking place on the frozen surface of the Milwaukee River. Newspapers reported every inch of the riverbank solidly packed with spectators and thousands more onlookers lining the Folsom Place (now Locust Street) viaduct. With the exception of college football, it was said to be the best-attended amateur sporting event in the state's history up to that time.

Increasing pollution forced the permanent closure of the Gordon Park swimming area after the 1937 season. The bathhouse continued to serve as a winter warming shelter for skaters for a few years after the swimming area was declared unsafe.

Beerline

Use the asphalt roadway behind the former bathhouse to climb the bluff to Gordon Park. Walk across the playing fields to reach the Beerline Recreational Trail at the at the southwest corner of the park. 

This trail follows one of the oldest railroad right of ways in the state. The Milwaukee & Waukesha, chartered in 1847 with construction beginning two years later, was the state's first railroad. In 1852, a second railroad, the La Crosse & Milwaukee, started building northward from its terminus at North Third Street and Highland Avenue on the west bank of the Milwaukee River. The line followed the river alongside Commerce Street to its engine terminal and railroad yard at the southeast corner of North Avenue and Humboldt Boulevard. From there, the line ducked under the North Avenue viaduct and climbed the river bluff to today's Gordon Park and turned northwest through the Riverwest neighborhood.

The railroad through Riverwest was destined to play a significant role in the new Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad. This short section of track generated more freight revenue per mile than any other part of the vast system. With three major breweries, Schlitz, Pabst, and Blatz, near the southern end, the branch soon acquired the nickname Beer Line. 

Certainly, beer was big business for the line. On some days, the breweries loaded more than 250 railroad cars. There were many other customers along the line. Except for a few residential blocks at the northern end of Riverwest, the Beer Line was lined with heavy industry, including the Nash (later American) Motors Seaman Body Plant on Capitol Drive, which required 35 to 50 freight cars a day. Other major shippers included Continental Can and Schuster's Department Store (which had a warehouse on Commerce Street).

Steam locomotives were replaced by diesels in the 1950s, but train after train rolled through Riverwest, often 100-cars long, a mile-long moving wall of steel. A heavy train climbing the river bluff from North Avenue would take ten minutes to struggle through the intersection, posing a real problem for emergency vehicles that needed to get through.

The Beer Line grew up with the brewing industry, and it faded when brewing drained from the Milwaukee scene. Blatz closed in 1959. Schlitz, which once accounted for hundreds of carloads a day, began to unravel, finally closing in 1981. Pabst, never a major rail shipper, also gave up on rail service. In the mid-1970s, American Motors sharply scaled back production at its Capitol Drive facility. By the 1980s, the plant had shut down. By then, the Milwaukee Road itself was in a death spiral, soon broken up and sold off in pieces.

Under new owners but starved for business, the Beer Line slowly retreated from downtown, ending 130 years of service on the historic line. The city and county reclaimed much of the right of way in recent years and opened the Beerline Recreational Trail.

Center Street Icehouse

East of the Beerline Trail, just to the south of Gordon Park, foundations along the edge of the bluff mark the former Center Street icehouse, one of many icehouses located along the Upper River.

The 350 x 100-foot icehouse, a hollow wooden box five stories tall, sold ice to wholesalers and the brewing industry. The building could hold 35,000 tons of ice arranged in layers and insulated by blankets of sawdust. It built in the late 1800s alongside the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul RR's Beer Line. The icehouse's trackside location simplified shipping. A long, inclined ramp extended down the steep bluff to the river's edge. In winter, teams of men would harvest blocks of ice, which were carried up the bluff on a conveyor. The ice was stored for use in the warm months in the days before mechanical refrigeration. 

The icehouse burned to the ground in a spectacular multi-alarm fire in June 1911. Canoeists on the Milwaukee River spotted flames at the south end of the structure, probably caused by sparks from a passing steam locomotive, and alerted the fire department. The building was an inferno by the time the first engine company arrived. So intense was the heat, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported, rubber coats melted on the backs of the firefighters. The blaze attracted a large crowd, some of whom narrowly escaped injury when the east wall of the burning building collapsed, sending hundreds of tons of ice down the steep hill, and into the river. 

Coming full circle

Up ahead is the end of the trial. Thanks for joining in this trip through Milwaukee's history. Interested in learning more? Check out my book "Lost Milwaukee" from the History Press.