Milwaukee turns 175 years old Sunday. We can thank three feuding founders.
Juneau, Kilbourn and Walker each controlled sections of what became Milwaukee
The celebration, like all celebrations in these COVID times, has been subdued. No cakes, no songs, and only a formal nod from elected officials. Milwaukee Magazine printed a sampler of historical vignettes, but there has been scant notice otherwise. Even the venerable Milwaukee Press Club, which has been throwing an annual party since the early 1960s, took a pass in 2020.
Milwaukee is turning 175 regardless. This Sunday, Jan. 31, marks the anniversary of its incorporation as a city in 1846. Boston’s charter was 24 years old by that time, and Seattle wouldn’t become a city for another 23 years. Chronologically as well as geographically, Milwaukee rests in the American middle.
The story of our founding may be familiar, but it’s worth retelling. There was, of course, a Milwaukee long before 1846. Perched on a broad bay of Lake Michigan and straddling a deep river, the site had attracted Native Americans for thousands of years. It was they who gave the place its name, which signifies “good land.”
Milwaukee’s port potential assured the end of the native regime. The Erie Canal opened in 1825, releasing a torrent of prospective settlers from New York and New England. They swarmed across the Great Lakes and dropped anchor wherever a river met a lake.
Milwaukee, with the best natural harbor on Lake Michigan’s western shore, emerged as a prime destina
Guest columnist
John Gurda
tion. In 1835, after surveying the land and ruthlessly “extinguishing” the claims of its resident tribes, the federal government put the future city up for sale. The price was an irresistible $1.25 an acre — less than $40 in today’s dollars. Milwaukee showed such promise that three competing settlements emerged in no time at all: Juneautown, on the east bank of the Milwaukee River; Kilbourntown, on the west; and Walker’s Point, on a narrow peninsula just downstream from the first two.
The three had little in common except a desire to put the others out of business. Despite its strategic position near the river mouth, Walker’s Point quickly faded from contention. With no access to capital, political power or even good legal help, George Walker, the settlement’s founder, had multiple handicaps. The most serious was his uncertain title to the land. Other speculators tried to jump Walker’s claim, and it was not until 1842 that he could sell lots with any assurance that his buyers wouldn’t lose them. Laidback to the point of lackadaisical, Walker watched helplessly as his cross-river rivals raced ahead in the contest for both investors and settlers.
There was a silver lining. As a direct result of its founder’s sluggish start, Walker’s Point became what is now the best-preserved 19th-century neighborhood in Milwaukee. Walker’s problems had a lasting impact on the metropolitan landscape as well. The northern half of Milwaukee County is approximately the same size as the southern half, but it has roughly twice as many residents, reflecting a historic lack of development pressure to the south. Why is there still so much farmland in Franklin and Oak Creek? Credit George Walker.
Solomon Juneau had the upper hand
With lonesome George shunted to the sideline, the real contest was between Juneautown and Kilbourntown.
Solomon Juneau, the east side’s founder, had clear seniority. A native of French Canada, he came to Milwaukee as a fur trader in 1818 and eventually established a post of his own on what is now the corner of North Water Street and East Wisconsin Avenue. Juneau had both an incontestable claim to his land and the financial and political backing of Green Bay capitalist Morgan Martin.
Byron Kilbourn played a role equivalent to Juneau’s on the west side of the river. He came to Wisconsin from Ohio in 1834 as a surveyor and stayed to become a highly aggressive and ethically flexible frontier potentate. Backed by affluent allies in Ohio, Kilbourn was able to accelerate the survey of his claim, secure a provisional title to the land, and then obtain an airtight federal patent. With his position assured, he went after his east side rivals with a vengeance. Both sides spent small fortunes improving their claims: filling in wetland, grading streets, making strategic gifts of lots, vying for federal favor, and even starting newspapers. Milwaukee was a two-newspaper town as early as 1837, when the settlement had barely 1,000 residents, fewer than Butler or Big Bend today. (The Journal Sentinel is a direct descendant of Solomon Juneau’s 1837 Milwaukee Sentinel.)
The east side took the early lead, in part because Morgan Martin had helped its residents secure the land office, the post office and the courthouse, but Byron Kilbourn thought he had the geographic edge. Juneautown occupied a narrow tongue of land between the river and the lake, which put definite constraints on its prospects for growth. Kilbourntown, by contrast, could expand indefinitely. If the west siders could only keep their rivals isolated on the far side of the river, surely urban domination would follow.
What that meant was a rabid opposition to bridges. The Kilbourn partisans mounted a long, slow siege of the Juneau camp, and it was not until 1840, five years after the first land sale, that the east side succeeded in putting the town’s first bridge across the river. Ironically, it crossed at Chestnut Street (now Juneau Avenue), practically in Byron Kilbourn’s front yard. The span was so convenient that the east siders used their own money to build three more downstream.
A night of violence in 1845
The aggrieved west siders, including Byron Kilbourn himself, nursed their wounds for a time, but the simmering cross-river tensions boiled over into violence during the night of May 7, 1845. A group of Kilbourntown residents liberated their end of the Chestnut Street bridge with axes and saws, dropping the entire span into the drink. East side residents awoke to find their access to the west blocked. After letting their resentments fester for a week or two, they retaliated by cutting off the west side’s remaining bridges to the east and south, an act that prompted a swift reaction from the Kilbourntown faction. Guns were fired, blows were exchanged, and blood was actually shed in a conflict that has come down through history as the Bridge War of 1845.
Cooler heads ultimately prevailed. Both sides realized that intramural violence was hardly an effective strategy for attracting new settlers — to either side. After a lengthy series of parleys and plebiscites, Juneautown and Kilbourntown, joined at last by Walker’s Point, voted to unite as the City of Milwaukee on Jan. 31, 1846. With 9,660 residents, Milwaukee was the largest settlement and the first city in Wisconsin Territory; statehood would not come until 1848.
Today, 175 years later, one tangible reminder of the pioneer rivalry remains. Before the first bridges were built, Kilbourntown and Juneautown were such separate entities that no attempt was made to align their street grids. As a direct result, our downtown bridges cross the river at an angle, a civic antique that will be part of the landscape for as long as there is a Milwaukee.
A 175th anniversary lacks the numerical weight of a centennial or a bicentennial. There’s not even a pronounceable word for the milestone; the options include “demisemiseptcentennial” and “dodransbicentennial.” The date is significant nonetheless.
In 1846, our ancestors brought into formal being a city that has been evolving in place for the better part of two centuries, and its story is still being written. The anniversary prompts us to look back in wonder and gratitude at the road we’ve traveled and to pause before we move on. COVID may have prevented a more robust celebration this year, but that’s life in a pandemic. Happy Birthday anyway, Milwaukee. John Gurda writes a column on local history for the Ideas Lab on the first Sunday of every month. Email: mail@johngurda.com