Milwaukee History

A Blend of Tradition and Progression

Hugging the shores of sparkling Lake Michigan, Milwaukee is a rich tapestry of first nations and Old World roots. From its early days as a trading post to its evolution as a major industrial port, Wisconsin's largest city has always had one foot firmly planted in tradition while the other rests in the exploration of new territory.

Gathering Place by the Water

The marshy land where the Milwaukee River joins Lake Michigan was first considered neutral ground shared by several Native American tribes. This was an age when everyone traveled by water, and the natural harbor on the lake's western shore made this area attractive to French missionaries and European fur trders traveling in the region.

In 1795, fur trader Jacques Vieau built a trading post along a bluff of the east side of the river, and before long, explorers and settlers established a rapidly-growing town and called it Milwaukee, which some historians believe originated from the Potawatomi term for "gathering place by the water".

A wave of immigration turned manufacturing into the city's lifeblood.

Milwaukee rose to early prominence as the nation's top shipping port for grain and wheat. The expert industrial skills that accompanied the arrival of German immigrants in the mid-1800s helped Milwaukee developed as a major hub of machinery, foundries, and metal-working.

Beer Capital of the World

As it grew in prosperity, Milwaukee was often praised for its European elegance and refined German culture, which included the brewing and sale of beer. Among these German immigrants who flocked to the city were men whose names would become legendary in the brewing industry: Miller, Schlitz, and Pabst. With access to unlimited wheat and water, as well as abundant ice from Lake Michigan, the city soon became a center for brewing, yeast-making, and grain trading. Within 20 years, over 35 breweries were established in Milwaukee, and the city proclaimed itself "The Beer Capital of the World".

"It is tru, similar things [cultural events and societies] were done in other cities where the Forty-eighters had congregated. But so far as I know, nowhere did their influence so quickly impress itself upon the whole social atmosphere as in 'German Athens of America' as Milwaukee was called at the time."

- Carl Schurz (1854)

When Prohibition became the law of the land, city officials looked the other way as Milwaukee brewing companies managed to stay afloat by providing beer to local speakeasies from secret stills and hidden tunnels. They also converted their plants to making chocolate and cheese in an effort to survive, and the Brew City continued to draw a massive workforce, expanding into an epicenter of industry.

What was once a sleepy town on the edge of Lake Michigan, with a harbor full of German immigrants and their beer, has become an energetic blend of new opportunities and the traditions of those early pioneers.