The Village of Newburg was incorporated in 1973 and spans both Washington and Ozaukee counties, though a majority of the land area and population lies within Washington County.[1] Incorporated with a population of just 634 residents, the Village of Newburg was formed out of parcels of land from the Town of Saukville in Ozaukee County and the Town of Trenton in Washington County.[2]
The area that later became the Village of Newburg follows several bends in the Milwaukee River and was first settled by Barton Salisbury in the winter of 1847-1848.[3] Salisbury recognized the benefits of harnessing the power of the Milwaukee River’s rapid current as it flowed through the area. By the end of the 1840s, he had built a sawmill, a gristmill, and a dam. The fledgling industry in Newburg was focused on logging and milling, as the first surveyors and settlers to Newburg and the surrounding Town of Trenton found a densely-wooded forest upon their arrival in the late 1830s. Also present in the early settlement was an ashery, which made use of the abundant ash, a byproduct of clearing the land of trees. Asheries produced pearlash and potash, a chemical leavener and fertilizer, respectively; both products served important purposes in frontier Wisconsin.[4]
Until it was demolished and replaced in 2003, one of the last steel truss bridges in Wisconsin stood in Newburg. Built in 1929 by the Wisconsin Bridge and Iron Company of Milwaukee, the original bridge made up a section of Main Street (County Highway MY). The bridge crossed a 150-foot span over the Milwaukee River on the west end of the Village’s central business district; a new concrete bridge crosses the same length.[5]
According to the 2010 census, the part of Newburg in Ozaukee County occupies 0.08 square miles and houses a population of 97. Most of the Village exists in Washington County and makes up 0.81 square miles of land, with a population of 1,157. More than 1,000 people in less than one square mile makes the Village of Newburg one of the most densely populated municipalities in Washington County.[6]
Footnotes [+]
- ^ Candace Doyle, “On the Line: Newburg Is Part of 2 Counties,” The Milwaukee Journal, January 14, 1983.
- ^ “Newburg: A New Village,” The Milwaukee Journal, January 2, 1974.
- ^ Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, Sanitary Sewer Service Area for the Village of Newburg: Ozaukee and Washington Counties (Waukesha, WI: Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Committee, 1993), 1, 19.
- ^ James Esselman and Leonard Casper, Town of Trenton & Village of Newburg Bicentennial ([Wisconsin]: n.p., 1976), 3-6.
- ^ “Milwaukee River Bridge, Washington County, Wisconsin,” Bridgehunter, accessed November 3, 2015; “Main Street Bridge,” Wisconsin Historical Society website, accessed November 10, 2015.
- ^ U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census of Population and Housing, Population and Housing Unit Counts, CPH-2-51, Wisconsin (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2012), 31, 40.
For Further Reading
Esselman, James, and Leonard Casper. Town of Trenton & Village of Newburg 1776-1976. [Wisconsin]: n.p., 1976.
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