City of the Day - Milwaukee, WI

History

The City of Milwaukee arose from a collection of scattered settlements on a site familiar to the Native American tribes in what is now eastern Wisconsin.

Local historians attribute the name to a word derived from the Potawatomi Tribe. The Potawatomis pronounced it Mahn-ah-wauk, meaning council grounds.

The first written mention of a word closely resembling Milwaukee was recorded in 1761. A British officer stationed in Green Bay, Lt. James Gorrell, transcribed the name of the area as Milwacky. A traveling companion of the French explorer LaSalle, Father Zenobe Membre, wrote in 1697 of a river called Mellioke.

The first immigrants to Milwaukee were French traders and trappers. During the 1830s, settlement occurred rapidly, and in earnest. Families established themselves here, bringing the population to several hundred by 1837.

That year, under a mandate from the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature to incorporate, Milwaukee and other settlements in the state became villages.

A City Charter was adopted in 1846, and Solomon Juneau was elected the first mayor. Juneau was a French trader who had settled his family in Milwaukee. The original aldermen numbered 15, from 5 districts, and received no salary.

Water News

You can find a list of water companies here.

You can find a list of churches in Milwaukee here.

An Environmental Working Group analysis of tap water tests from 1998 through 2002 shows that customers of Milwaukee Waterworks drank water containing up to 24 pollutants, including one unregulated contaminant. Milwaukee Waterworks is one of 65,000 water suppliers across the country wrestling with treating water polluted by sprawl, sewage, factory farms, and industry.