Menomonee Valley
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By the late 1860s, space on the urban end of the Milwaukee River was at a premium, and would-be industrialists had to look elsewhere for room to grow.
Where they looked, more often than not, was the Menomonee Valley. What had been a prime natural resource for the early Indian tribes became a prime industrial resource for their acquisitive successors – after a few improvements were made. In the early 1860s, the Valley was what it had been for centuries, a waterlogged wilderness visited by only the adventurous. In 1861 the Milwaukee Sentinel described it as a liquid maze: When you fancy yourself sailing up the stream, the chances are that you are only being lured into a cul de sac of wild rice, and when you fondly imagine you are miles away from the city, some sudden turn will bring you up before a great brewery or ship yard, where several hundred employees stare at you ironically. Such adventures were practically impossible after 1869, when a group of business leaders launched the Menomonee Improvements project. Their plan, endorsed by public authorities and aided by other private efforts, was to dredge a network of canals and slips in the heart of the Valley, and create dry land in the spaces between. The project required colossal quantities of fill, including dredge spoil, gravel “borrowed” from adjoining bluffs, and even garbage. In 1886 the Sentinel described the mess behind one “Free Dump” sign: “rotten potatoes and fruits, the contents of paunches and entrails of animals, the refuse of meat shops, and all sorts of filth under a thin covering of ashes and dirt.” The landfill project took years to finish, but the result was the most valuable industrial real estate in the region. The Menomonee Valley offered hundreds of acres of developable land, six miles of dock frontage, and superlative rail service – everything, in short, an industrialist could desire. Lumber yards, coal yards, and sash and door factories sprouted in the eastern end of the Valley even before the muck was dry. They were soon joined by some nationally significant neighbors. Pfister & Vogel began to develop a tannery complex at what is now the south end of the Sixth Street viaduct in the 1870s; it quickly became the largest in a city known for leather. Adjoining P&V to the west was the old Melms brewery, once Milwaukee’s leading producer. Frederick Pabst purchased the facility in 1870 and built his company’s first bottling plant on the site five years later. Farther west was the city’s meat packing district. In 1869 the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad opened a large stockyard in the Valley, just north of today’s Mitchell Park Domes. Attracted by this central source of supply (and the site’s distance from residential districts), magnates like John Plankinton and Frederick Layton built some of the nation’s largest packing houses on nearby Muskego Avenue. Still farther west was a complex that dwarfed them all: the main shops of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad. The first building opened in 1880, on a 160-acre site west of today's Thirty-fifth Street viaduct. Under the guidance of general manager Sherburn S. Merrill, the “West Milwaukee” shops made and repaired all the rolling stock for a railroad that owned 5,000 miles of track. By the mid-1880s, the complex employed nearly 1,800 workers. The Menomonee Valley provided building materials as well as building sites. The region’s largest brickyard was located on the south rim of the Valley, near today’s Thirteenth Street. It furnished jobs for 200 men in 1880, when the yard’s output of pale yellow bricks topped 15 million. Thousands were used in nearby plants, reinforcing Milwaukee’s image as the Cream City. Thousands more were shipped to eager customers as far away as Europe. John Gurda - The Making of Milwaukee |