Much of what we think of today as Milwaukee’s lakefront wasn’t there when the first Europeans began to settle in this area in the early 1800s. As the city developed, land was platted for development nearly all the way to the ends of the tall bluffs that then lined the lakefront, leaving precious little space for public lands along the water. The lakefront we know today was the result of massive landfill projects over the past 100-plus years that were engineered to maximize both its industrial and recreation potential.
These landfill areas were created by literally dumping earth and stone into the lake until it built up into new, useable land. The earliest fill projects were mostly undertaken using dirt and mud dredged up from the lake or river bottoms and other loads of unneeded debris, including garbage and coal stove ash. These areas include pretty much all lands between the South Shore Marina and North Point. South of the straight cut, where the rivers enter the lake, are the huge docking terminals that were built on the outer edge of Jones Island in the early 1930s. This project was undertaken to maximize the shipping potential of the port and took advantage of the new south portion of the breakwater wall, which could now protect large ships as they docked or sat moored at the island.
The lands just to the north of the straight cut have known the most varied uses of any part of the lakefront. One of the first major fill projects was untaken in the 1910s; the initial idea was to use this as expanded municipal docking space. However, by the time the project was finished, railroad shipping had taken away so much business from Great Lakes package freighters that the extra space was not needed. The area was eventually used as an airfield and later a flight school for seaplanes. During the Cold War, it was home to a Nike anti-aircraft missile battery. Since 1970, it has been known as Henry Maier Festival Park, home to Summerfest and many of the city’s major ethnic festivals.
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Further up along the shore, the largest part of the “reclaimed” lakefront is found in Veterans Park. Work on the 100-acre fill project, which includes all the land east of Lincoln Memorial Drive, began in 1957 with the installation of a sheet piling bulkhead that ran all the way to the lake bed. It took more than five years to complete this “outline” of the park, after which 2.5 million cubic yards of fill—most of it taken from the corridors built for Interstates 43 and 94—were used to create the park.
Over the years, other aspects of the lakefront have been adapted to more modern uses: The old Chicago & Northwestern rail line was transformed into the Oak Leaf Trail, the former cruise ship dock gave rise to Discovery World, and earth from the deep tunnel project was used to build Lakeshore State Park. The lakefront is now, perhaps more so than it ever was, Milwaukee’s front door to the world. It is a priceless natural resource that is not quite as natural as it seems.
