Straight Cut
The need for a safe harbor at Milwaukee was felt from the moment that vessels began visiting the town, as sand bars at the river's mouth required larger vessels to anchor offshore. There a number of vessels were damaged by storms, and some were sunk.
Mayor Byron Kilbourn and others pointed to a bend in the Milwaukee River, where it ran to within a few yards of Lake Michigan, then turned southward and flowed for another mile before entering the lake. At this bend, they said, an entrance from the lake should be dug. South siders, however, opposed moving the harbor entrance northward - so on a dark night in 1842, Kilbourn sent a work crew to dig a new channel out to the lake. By the time the crew was finished, water was running through the cut with the force of a mill race. Eager to see a vessel enter at that point, Kilbourn offered two lots in Kilbourntown to Capt. William Cross, if he would bring his steamboat, the Patronage, in through the new cut. The captain made the attempt, but such was the force of the current, and the rapidity with which the lake formed a bar where it met the current, that he was unable to do it. The first northeast gale washed sand into the cut, and obliterated every trace of the night's work. At last, in 1857, the city completed its proposed "straight cut," and piers were built into the lake to protect the harbor entrance from storms and wave-driven sand. Much of this work was done at city expense. Soon large steamboats were steaming into the river, and large schooners were being towed as far north as Kilbourntown. James S. Buck - Pioneer History of Milwaukee |
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