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Showing 41-44 of 44 Entries

Water

Author: John Gurda
Sepia-colored long shot of a Union Steamboat Company vessel in an open water body around Milwaukee Harbor. The boat is in the image's center and points to the right foreground. Two smoking chimneys stand on the back of the boat. Text beneath the image reads "Instantaneous View From Mouth of Harbor."
The history of Milwaukee is anything but dry. Water, in fact, runs through it like a river, constituting an element so critical that imagining the community without it is virtually impossible. Whether for transportation, industry, recreation, sanitation, or simply as the backdrop for daily life, water is the fluid medium in which Milwaukee evolved from… Read More

Weather

Author: C. J. Hribal
Grayscale full-shot of someone in a winter coat shovelling the sidewalk. Snow piles appear along the sidewalk in the foreground to the background. Snows cover the street that stretches down on the far right. A bus with lights on runs on the street. The streetlights glow in the background.
Milwaukeeans love to boast about their weather almost as much as they love to complain about it. I’m reminded of an old song by John Martyn, “Bless the Weather.” It’s a love song of lament—the refrain noting that what the weather giveth, the weather taketh away: “Bless the weather that brought you to me//Curse the… Read More

Wild Rice

Author: Marlo Buser
A drawing illustrates several Indigenous people harvesting wild rice by canoe in a body of water. Three people sit on a canoe. One on the left holds a paddle's shaft with its tip in the water. Two on the right knock the grain into the canoe with smaller paddles. Lush and tall wild rice plants with feathery flowers on its top grows next to them. Other people harvesting in canoes are visible in the far distance.
Wild rice was and is a staple food crop for the Native American tribes of Wisconsin. Indeed, the Menominee, one of the major tribes in the Milwaukee area, were called “the Wild Rice People” by Europeans. Traditionally grown in shallows at the edges of lakes and ponds, wild rice is harvested in the fall by… Read More

Wildlife

Author: Michael Pulido
Long shot of three whitetail deer on a green lawn in Whitnall Park. Lush green trees are visible in the background.
The history of wildlife in the Milwaukee region is the story of the complex relationships between animals, humans, and the built and natural environments. The region is defined here by the four human-defined counties that encompass the Milwaukee River Basin and its three rivers, the Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnickinnic. To the east is the shoreline… Read More
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