Milwaukee: A City Built on Water

by John Gurda

Overview

Paddle through the watery history of the Midwest’s Cream City. 

The success and survival of Milwaukee lies in the rivers that meander through its streets and the great lake at its shore. The area’s earliest inhabitants recognized the value of an abundant, clean water supply for food and transportation. Settlers, shipbuilders, and city leaders used the same waters to travel greater distances, power million-dollar industries, and even have a bit of fun. 

In Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, celebrated historian John Gurda expands on his popular Milwaukee Public Television documentary, relating the mucky history of the waters that gave Milwaukee life—and occasionally threatened the city through erosion, invasive species, and water-borne diseases.

Telling tales of brewers, brickmakers, ecologists, and engineers, Gurda explores the city’s complicated connection with its most precious resource and greatest challenge. You’ll meet the generations of people, from a Potawatomi chief to fur traders and fishermen, who settled on the small spit of land known as Jones Island; learn how Milwaukee’s unique water composition creates its distinct cream-colored bricks; visit Wisconsin’s first waterparks; and see how city leaders transformed the Milwaukee River—once described as a “vast sewer” with an “odorous tide”—into today’s lively and lovely Riverwalk.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870208652
Publisher:	Wisconsin Historical Society
Publication date:	05/25/2018
Edition description:	1
Pages:	228
Sales rank:	624,968
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

John Gurda is a Milwaukee-born writer and historian who has been studying his hometown since 1972. He is the author of twenty-one books, including histories of Milwaukee-area neighborhoods, churches, and industries. He is also a photographer, lecturer, and local history columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Gurda is an eight-time winner of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Award of Merit. The common thread in all his work is understanding history as “why things are the way they are.”

Gurda wrote, co-produced, and hosted Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, a one-hour documentary broadcast on Milwaukee Public Television in 2015.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 In a State of Nature 5

2 To Wisconsin by Water 15

3 Water at Work 33

4 A Liquid Economy 51

5 In-Town Up North 69

6 Milwaukee's Magnificent Lakefronr 91

7 Jones Island; People of the Port 111

8 Singing a Dirty Song 129

9 Troubled Waters 161

10 A Turn for the Better 183

"Great Lakes" (A Poem) 212

Sources 213

Index 219