Confluence
The congested heart of Milwaukee's inner harbor was at a place called "the confluence," where the Menomonee River joins the Milwaukee River.
Swing bridges had to be opened frequently here, to allow the passage of steamboats, schooners and tugs. The Milwaukee Sentinel reported in 1855 that a lake schooner had kept the Water Street bridge open for more than an hour, "delaying the mail, innumerable pedestrians, sixty-five teams of horses on the north side, and forty-seven teams on the south." Two rapidly growing railroad companies sited their depots, rail yards and roundhouses near the confluence. Here the predecessors of the Milwaukee Road and the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad competed with one another for the transshipment of grain, lumber and coal. The companies' yards were directly across the Menomonee River from one another, but they rejected the idea of linking their tracks with a bridge, for fear of losing business to the other. The last significant shipments to pass through the confluence by boat were barges delivering coal to the Valley Power Plant in the Menomonee Valley. These deliveries ended when the boilers at the power plant were converted from coal to natural gas. |