Golden Cargo
It took a full week in 1841 to load the first cargo of wheat ever shipped from Milwaukee. Workers had to carry 4,000 bushels of the grain onto a lighter, the C.C. Trowbridge, which delivered it to a lake schooner lying at anchor in the bay. Once all the wheat was emptied into the hold of the vessel, the grain was shipped down the lakes to Buffalo.
By 1849 Wisconsin was growing more wheat than any other state but Illinois, and almost two million dollars worth were moving through Milwaukee each year. Starting in 1858, when new railroads linked Milwaukee with the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien and La Crosse, wheat from Iowa and Minnesota was being shipped through Milwaukee. A single grain elevator built at Milwaukee that year could hold 400,000 bushels, and discharge 100,000 bushels a day. "The grain trade commanded the service of the largest and fastest schooners,” writes historian Theodore Karamanski. “The journey from the ports of southern Lake Michigan to the grain elevators of Buffalo was the long haul of Great Lakes commerce, nineteen hundred miles. On average, a fast schooner could make the trip in five to seven days, although bad weather or difficulty with negotiating a tow through Lake St. Clair could result in a voyage twice as long. "The greatest interest was stirred by the first voyage of the season. By April 1st every vessel would be fitted out and ready to sail, held back only by fear that the Straits of Mackinac were still blocked by ice. "'No one would permit another an advantage he could prevent,' recalled Captain Timothy Kelley. 'When one captain decided the time had come, and slipped his mooring lines, the news shot through the port. Away he would go, and like a flock of pigeons the rest would be right after him.'" By 1862, when the Civil War halted shipments down the Mississippi River, Milwaukee surpassed even Chicago to become the busiest grain terminal on earth. A grain exchange was established in Milwaukee in 1880. “Here the ‘bulls’ and the ‘bears’ are wont to congregate daily,” recalled James Buck, “for the exchange of the products of the teeming west. Vast amounts of cereals daily change hands. Fortunes are often made in one hour, and lost as quickly.” By this time, however, the wheat trade at Milwaukee was already in decline. The high point of the grain trade came in 1873, when 28.5 million bushels moved through the port. North America's wheat-growing region had moved westward, and grain terminals at Duluth, flour mills at Minneapolis, and cross-country rail lines were capturing much of the trade. |