During the Day

1 ENCOUNTER WILD ANIMALS AT HAVENWOODS

6141 N. Hopkins St.

The easiest (and flattest) place to stumble across wildlife in the city of Milwaukee is this 237-acre state forest on the Northwest Side that, in years gone by, was once the site of a prison and a dump. Slowly and with great effort, students and other workers blazed walking trails and replanted the area with tens of thousands of trees. Turkeys and deer took up residence, and Lincoln Creek now feeds a pond teeming with life. According to staff at Havenwoods, the creek began simply as a farm ditch in the 1930s and grew as more land around the site was developed and paved over, increasing runoff.

2 EXPLORE THE RUINS AT AZTALAN STATE PARK

N6200 County Road Q, Jefferson

Until about 1600, city-dwelling Native Americans could be found across the Midwest and the Southeast. One of the northernmost of these people’s towns was roughly midway between present-day Milwaukee and Madison. Early archaeologists named the place after the Aztecs, because some of the mounds and burial sites were tall and squarish. More modern archaeologists describe a hard-bitten community where life was crowded and cold. An enduring mystery surrounds the identity of the “Princess” of Aztalan, a young woman buried with thousands of shells, beads and other precious things. What made her so special? She may have been royalty, or the subject of mystical beliefs. Whatever her reason for veneration, she rests today at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

3 FIND THE BURIAL MOUND AT LAKE PARK

Just southeast of Locust Street and Lake Drive

One of the few remaining Indian burial mounds in Milwaukee County can be found at Lake Park, to the north of the Lake Park Golf Course and the lawn bowling courts. A low plaque marks the rise, which was most likely meant to “overlook” Lake Michigan. According to Mark Dudzik, state archaeologist for the Department of Natural Resources, native mounds were often built near overlooks, and this one is no exception. The Lake Park mound is estimated to have been built between 300 B.C. and 400 A.D. as part of a village near the lake and most likely contains burials, he says. How many isn’t known. The city once had many such mounds, but early Milwaukeeans demolished nearly all of them to make way for development. “There were scores of them,” Dudzik says.