Milwaukee PBS Specials

(bluegrass music playing) - It's not a tourist destination.

Jones Island lies just blocks from downtown Milwaukee but visitors are few.

What they see is salt piles, fuel tanks, freight yards, docks, the freeway bridge, and the largest sewage treatment plant in Wisconsin.

These are all vital components of a major city with their own gritty grandeur, but scenic?

Not so much.

Take a closer look.

In the midst of this manufactured landscape you'll find a postes tab of greenery that has no practical reason for being.

Kaszube's Park is the smallest park in Milwaukee, about the size of a basketball court.

Why Kaszube's?

Why in this out of the way location?

And just what is Jones Island?

There must be a story here.

In fact, there are several stories.

For instance, Jones Island is one of the most historic places in Milwaukee.

It was the home of four distinct cultures- Indian, French Canadian, Yankee, and Polish.

Each utterly erased by the one that's followed before today's landscape emerged.

Few places in Wisconsin have seen such profound change and fewer still have so many tales to tell.

But let's start at the beginning.

Jones Island, which is actually a peninsula began as a narrow sliver of land whittled to a point by Lake Michigan's waves on one side and the Milwaukee river's currents on the other.

This is where the river met the lake and their confluence was one of the most strategic spots in Wisconsin.

With the sheltering bay, a deep estuary, and easy access to the interior.

Those advantages were obvious to the Peninsula's first residents.

For uncounted centuries, Native Americans made their homes at the river mouth.

In fact, the first written record of Milwaukee is a description of the future Jones Island.

In 1679, a century before the American Revolution, a French missionary reported an Indian village at the confluence.

It would become the largest in Milwaukee with a population of at least 500, many of them Potawatomi.

The early islanders speared fish in the crystal clear waters of the Milwaukee River, gathered wild rice in the fertile marshland near its mouth, and built their wigwams on grounds stable enough to support trees two feet in diameter.

One of their favorite past times was racing ponies on the hard sand beach of the lake shore.

Riding bareback, the young men of the village performed feats of horsemanship that amazed the early Europeans.

The pony racers had company after 1700.

French Canadians built trading posts on the peninsula and began to exchange European goods for furs, especially Beaver.

Laurent Dusseur was in business by 1763 and Alexander la Fumbuois had a post there 20 years later.

These musically named newcomers lived among the Indians, but they were agents of deep disruption.

Imported diseases, especially smallpox, caused appalling mortality.

Imported goods, iron traps and rifles, brass kettles, woolen blankets made life easier for the Natives, but also made them dependent on white technology.

And imported alcohol was a solvent that threatened to dissolve ancient traditions.

The last chief of the Jones Island Village was Onatisa, a gifted order known as King of the Potawatomi.

In the waning days of the fur trade, he reportedly had a four poster bed in his wigwam, and levied attacks of several gallons of whiskey each week on his white partners.

Milwaukee's Indians were first dispirited and then dispossessed.

In 1838, after signing a pair of brutally one sided treaties with the United States, the Natives were gathered at Indian Fields on the south side, and herded west to reservations in Kansas.

After thousands of years, Native Americans were no longer welcome on their own land.

The river mouth was soon serving a new purpose.

A tidal wave of American settlers have been surging west for generations, most of them so-called Yankees with roots in the British isles.

Nearly all came by water.

First crossing New York state on the Erie Canal, and then coming up the Great Lakes by schooner or steamship.

Good harbors promised great cities, and Milwaukee, with its broad bay and deep river, had the best natural harbor on the western shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago not accepted.

Settlers and speculators flocked to the aspiring metropolis.

The initial public land sale was held in 1835, and Milwaukee incorporated as Wisconsin's first city in 1846.

The river mouth, dredged and reinforced, came alive as the city's front door busy with boat traffic of all shapes and sizes.

Not surprisingly, Milwaukee also became a center for building ships.

In about 1853, James Monroe Jones, a Yankee schooner captain from Buffalo, opened a yard on the west side of the peninsula.

It became the biggest in Milwaukee.

Captain Jones launched nearly 30 ships in all, most of them schooners, those graceful white wing birds of the open lakes.

His vessels were known for their record setting speed.

The captain and his crew could build a complete schooner in as little as 60 days.

A reporter calling in 1856 was duly impressed.

- [Reporter] Anyone who visits Captain Jones at the bend in the river will find a lively place.

The whizzing of the steam saw mill, the framing of timbers the tugging and lifting of huge spars, the tapping of the cockers, altogether make up a busy and noisy scene at the shipyard.

- [Narrator] The captain's initial success didn't last.

The Milwaukee River's original mouth was near today's Kaszube's Park.

Downtown interest had long wanted to move it a half mile north to shorten the tortuous trip upstream.

In 1857, they succeeded, and the so-called straight cut was completed at the river's present mouth.

Captain Jones was suddenly marooned between the old and new harbors.

In Jones Island, for the first and only time in its history, became a genuine island.

The captain's troubles weren't over.

A financial panic in 1857 dried up hoarders for new ships, and an 1858 storm blew a hole in the island big enough to sail a schooner through.

James Monroe Jones was done.

The captain moved to Detroit and started over, leaving nothing on the landscape but his name.

The past keeps reasserting itself.

The same storm that ruined Captain Jones uncovered an Indian cemetery where generations of natives had buried their dead.

The waves exposed bones, pots, and pipes that were quickly snatched up by white collectors.

Jones Island continued to change.

New storm waves eventually filled the old mouth with sand and the island was once more a Peninsula, this time pointing north rather than south.

When the captain left, Jones Island became a windswept wasteland dotted with the shantees of sportsmen who used the place for fishing and duck hunting.

But it was time for a new chapter in the island's long history, one that would be the most colorful of all.

It was time for the Kaszubes.

On a map of Poland, the Kaszuby region is easy to find.

Just zoom in on a fish hook shaped piece of land in the Baltic sea and push inland.

Most Kaszubes were farmers, but not those on that fish hook, The Hel Peninsula.

Their home was a long narrow sandpit shaped by centuries of wave action, not unlike Jones Island.

And they were fisher folk who brought in tons of cod, salmon, and herring every year.

The fishing was good, but thousands of Kaszubes left the Baltic Sea coast for America after 1860, pushed by overpopulation and the oppressive policies of their Prussian occupiers.

Milwaukee became a leading destination for Polish immigrants, including the Kaszubes.

One of the first fishermen to come was Jacob Muja.

According to the local legend, Muja arrived in 1872, took one look at Jones Island, and said, "Fish."

He bought one of the old shanties, laid informal claim to the unoccupied land around him, and rode home with news of his discovery.

The result was a steady influx of Kaszubes to Jones Island.

Muja was reportedly a genial and generous host sharing land with the newcomers and helping them build houses.

There were a dozen on the peninsula in 1875, 20 in 1880, and in the 1890s more than 300.

Not all belonged to Jacob Muja's recruits.

There were dozens of German speaking Pomeranians from farther west on the Baltic sea coast and a sprinkling of other groups.

But the Kaszubes were dominant.

They wasted no time getting on the water.

First in row boats near the shore, then in motorized tugs that chugged over the horizon.

Jones Island's fishermen harvested the bounty of the lake, using skills handed down from their ancestors.

They netted more than 2 million pounds of fish in a good year, including lake trout, whitefish, herring, perch, and sturgeon.

Sold fresh, salted, or smoked, their catch was an essential source of protein for the city's growing population.

The hours were long, the work was hard, and the hazards were constant.

Winter runs could be especially dangerous, but the rewards were tangible.

Mainland Milwaukeeans watched in wonder as a genuine fishing village took shape of the river mouth.

Although the immigrants were technically squatters, they made Jones Island their own, building houses, planting trees, raising cows, chickens, and children.

By the turn of the century, the islands population had swelled to nearly 1600.

They created a landscape like no other in Wisconsin.

The inland shore was one unbroken line of docks, fish sheds, boat slips, and massive wooden reels used to drive the miles of nets the islanders pulled up every day.

The village itself was just as distinctive.

The orderly street system shown on early plans was a figment of the map maker's imagination.

This is what the island actually looked like.

A hodgepodge of streets and a jumble of houses that defied easy description.

Chaotic would be a kind word.

There were short streets, long streets and circular streets.

Many just tracks in the sand, but there wasn't a single straight street.

For outsiders, getting lost had never been easier.

The houses were often just as improvised.

All were modest.

Some were built of scrap lumber washed ashore and several never made the acquaintance of a coat of paint.

There were small businesses scattered among the small houses, notably saloons.

Jones Island once claimed 11 thirst emporiums, including a bar called Cannibals Rendezvous.

Like those on the mainland, they served as informal community centers, but the islands taverns developed a specialty.

The Friday night fish fry.

With plenty of fish, plenty of Catholics forbid neat meat on Friday and plenty of saloons buying for customers, Jones Island was the likely birthplace of this venerable local tradition.

Milwaukeeans have been enjoying it ever since.

The saloons also hosted Kaszubian wedding receptions- epic celebrations that could last for a week.

The beer always flowed freely and one favorite toast was unique to Jones Island.

"Many fish to make heavy the purse and many children to make it light again."

This couple took the toast literally, raising a brood of 13.

Although Jones Island was a world apart its isolation should not be overstated.

The village was flanked on three sides by a major city and ship steamed by day and night.

There was also a steady flow of visitors.

Main landers, including beer barons and other notables, patronized the island saloons on the weekends.

One barkeeper even offered regular boat service between his dock and the Wisconsin Avenue Bridge.

Thirsty guests who got carried away usually found themselves getting carried away by a rowboat to the nearest point on the mainland.

For the saloon crowd, Jones Island was a harmless curiosity.

A quaint diversion.

Other Milwaukeeans insisted on taking the colony too seriously.

The fishing boats, the drying reels, the radically unplanned landscape, proved irresistible to a certain class of romantics, including some of the city's best artists and writers.

The result was enough paintings to fill a gallery, and reams of colorful pros.

This 1903 ode was typical.

- [Franz impersonator] The winding muddy alley like streets, which eventually lead nowhere have a peculiar atmosphere of romance.

A strange interest is centered in the tumble down, weather beaten exterior aspect of the houses, which fills one's poetic soul to overflowing.

There, the noise of Milwaukee comes but a faint muffled breath of itself and the thunder of the trolley car or the crash of the steam engine is supplanted by the never ceasing murmur and wash of water on the sandy shores.

- [Narrator] Picturesque it may have been, but Jones Island failed to fill the poetic souls of public officials.

The islanders were squatters who paid no city land taxes and so they received no city services.

If a government agency wanted to build on Jones Island, they simply did so without hearings or impact statements.

In 1878, a Coast Guard station was placed at the very tip of the peninsula.

It was joined eight years later by a pumping station that piped raw sewage directly into Lake Michigan, the islanders fishing grounds.

An odorous garbage incinerator was added in 1902 to burn Milwaukee's solid waste right over the villager's heads.

Then Jones Island became the recommended site for a sewage treatment plant.

The squatters were not consulted.

In fact, they were not even considered.

"The island was chosen," said sewage officials, "because of it's isolation and especially its remoteness from residential districts."

The sole exception to this not so benign neglect was a public school.

In 1896, aware that the island's children were growing up without educations, the city built a barrack style school on the lake side of the peninsula.

The teachers, all young women, were ferried out from the mainland every day by a local fisherman and the commute continued even when the channel was choked with ice.

These adventurous teachers spent their days in what must have been the most unusual educational setting in the city.

While mainland kids scraped their knees on hard gravel playgrounds, the children of Jones Island had recess on the beach.

The teachers joined in gladly.

One of them recalled her students with great affection.

- [Teacher] Jones Island was completely isolated.

A different country entirely.

The youngsters had accumulated a lot of knowledge about birds and animals, and the waves and the winds in the course of their open air life.

I was the one who was different.

- [Narrator] The mainland came to Jones Island but there was plenty of traffic in the opposite direction.

City residents, after all, were the primary customers for the island's fish, sold largely through wholesalers but also from door to door.

A Jones Island baseball team played against mainland squads, and a fisherman's chorus offered occasional concerts across the river.

The strongest tie was religious.

Jones Island's Kuszubes were faithful members of St. Stanislaus Catholic Church, Polish Milwaukee's flagship congregation.

Every Sunday morning, whole families dressed in their finest road across the Kinnickinnic River and walked up the hill to mass on Mitchell Street.

They left tangible evidence of their devotion.

According to Parish legend, the Kashubes donated a decorative beam in thanksgiving for deliverance from a violent storm.

It's still adorned the sanctuary high above the main altar.

The city was all around them, but the people of Jones Island created a self-sufficient world of their own.

While their fellow immigrants labored in factories, the islanders continue the old world way of life they had known for centuries.

As Milwaukee belched and bustled across the river, they caught their fish, mended their nets, celebrated their weddings, and mourned their dead.

Jones Island was an urban village in the fullest sense of the term, one of the most extraordinary in America.

It couldn't last.

The presence of a tiny fishing village near the heart of a major industrial center had always seemed unlikely.

As the 20th century progressed, it became impossible.

Jones Island's way of life was under constant siege from forces outside and pressures within.

In time, they converged to wipe the village off the map.

The first assault came from the south.

The village's nearest neighbor was an iron mill established on the lake shore in 1868, and owned by the Illinois Steel Company.

In 1896, claiming a prior title, the Chicago based giant tried to evict the islanders to make room for a plant expansion.

The Kuszubes and their neighbors were outraged.

An impromptu army of 500, including women armed with clubs, turned back the first sheriff's deputies.

And both sides settled in for a long court fight.

With help from Victor Berger, the leader of Milwaukee's socialist movement, the islanders claimed adverse occupancy, or in plain English, squatters' rights.

Illinois Steel had to take them on one by one and in the end, only 10% of the residents lost their homes.

Despite their victory in this David and Goliath battle the village had clearly passed its peak.

As Milwaukee changed, Jones Island did not.

While mainland residents enjoyed electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing, the islanders got by with kerosene lamps, contaminated wells, and backyard privies.

The fishing was still good, but the village was increasingly an anachronism.

It's houses getting shabbier with each storm, it's young people more restless.

As the islanders looked ahead, pride contended with shame.

The next blow proved fatal.

Milwaukee's population surge to 400,000 after 1910 and the city developed an urgent need for two major improvements- a sewage treatment plant and an outer harbor.

Jones Island was the obvious location for both.

In 1914, the city condemned the peninsula.

This time, the Kaszubes and their neighbors put up scant resistance, largely because Milwaukee paid them for their property.

Sorting out who owned what created one of the most complex real estate transactions in Milwaukee's history.

The final title abstract filled 823 pages.

Soon there was a general exodus.

In 1915, Jones Island still looked much as it had for generations, an oasis of green in a blue collar town, a hive of humanity at the city's front door.

By 1923, just eight years later, it had been transformed.

From more than 200 houses in 1910, the number of dwellings plunged to just six.

As the island was cleared, it was also enlarged.

The city remade the peninsula in it's own industrial image.

Pilings and bulk ins on the lakeside created impalements that were filled with muck dredge from the riverside.

As it dried, all this made land at least tripled the size of the peninsula.

Jones Island grew from a narrow neck of sand with soft edges to a stout extension of the mainland with rigid borders.

As landfill continued, Milwaukee built a massive sewage treatment plant on the north tip of the island.

Opened in 1925, it was the largest plant in the world to use a new technology.

Pumping air into raw sewage encouraged the growth of microorganisms that digested the toxic waste.

This activated sludge method removed 95% of the bacteria and 90% of the solids.

It became the industry standard worldwide and Milwaukee was the pioneer.

And what happened to the residue?

Thrifty Milwaukee dried it, bagged it, and sold it as a nitrogen rich fertilizer called milorganite, still widely used on lawns and golf courses across the country.

On the east side of the peninsula, the city created a genuine outer harbor.

As lake freighters outgrew the Milwaukee River, the new harbor provided ample dock space, enabling Milwaukee to retain its place as one of the premier ports on the Great Lakes.

As land was made, sewage was treated, and docks were created, a handful of holdouts continued to live on the riverside of Jones Island.

With no immediate need for the land, The city left them alone.

Their unofficial mayor was Felix Struck, a one-time fishing tug captain who had come ashore to run a weather beaten tavern called The Old Harbor.

Ignored and almost forgotten, Captain Struck, poured beer, smoked fish, and told stories in his little saloon for decades.

In 1943, however, near the midpoint of World War II, he was evicted for reasons of what authorities called port security.

The old man was an unlikely saboteur, but rules are rules.

Struck was moved to a new home on the south side.

Five months later, he was dead.

With Captain Struck's departure, endless centuries of human habitation on Jones Island came to an end.

The landscape, however, continued to evolve.

The port and the sewage plant both expanded.

There were new bulk materials to buy and sell, including road salt, petroleum products, and cement.

The Dan Home Bridge rose on eastern horizon.

Dump trucks and freight cars replaced fish sheds and net reels.

Jones Island became a hub of traffic and a point of exchange with the resident population of zero.

Then in a moment of inspired whimsy, the city turned the site of Captain Struck's last stand into this park and named it for the islands major ethnic group Dedicated in 1974, Kaszube's Park became a touchstone of memory for former islanders and their descendants.

In about 1977, they began to gather at the park for a picnic every summer to share stories, show pictures, and raise a glass to times gone by.

Those gatherings continue.

- To the Kuszubes and Milwaukee.

- The changes are staggering.

Where Indian ponies once raced, where fur traders paddled their canoes, where schooners were launched, where immigrants caught tons of fish, today, you will find only the complex infrastructure of a major American city.

There has been one transformation after another, but that's what our restless species does.

We rearrange the landscape again and again to meet our ever changing needs.

There's a larger lesson in the story of Jones Island.

We are not the first ones here, and our world rests in the foundations of older worlds as distinctive as our own.

In that knowledge lie the seeds of humility, and a fresh resolve to make our time here worthy of remembrance.

- Funding for People of the Port comes from - Committed to protecting Lake Michigan, Veolia Water, Milwaukee provides water reclamation services in partnership with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District for over 1 million people in our community - And from the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewers District, the Fund for Lake Michigan, the Daniel W, Hoan Foundation, Wisconsin Coastal Management Program, Port Milwaukee, and the members of Milwaukee PBS.

I went up to Milwaukee to see my baby there she worked down on Jones Island her aroma was so rare It seems the fertilizer is the tantalizer that keeps me coming back for more I got those old Milwaukee pack 'em up.

Milorganite blues My baby's name is Busia From Poland she did come To work out on Jones Island Amid the sludge and scum She wears a bright babushka And patent overshoes She's a real hot mama for sure That's why she keeps me wailing those old Milorganite blues I got those old Milwaukee pack 'em up Milorganite blues