Down in the Valley: A Menomonee Retrospective

In the 1700s, the Menomonee Valley was a sprawling wetland that fed and supplied hundreds of Native American families. In the 1800s, it was filled in to become the most valuable industrial real estate in Wisconsin. By the late 1900s, it was a civic embarrassment, one of the least attractive and most polluted sites in the state. In recent decades the Valley has been utterly transformed to become a center of clean industry, urban parkland, and tourist destinations. Join me for a ground-level look at the past and present of a district that has always played a central role in Milwaukee. The program will be held at the historic Milwaukee Gas Light plant as a benefit for the Chudnow Museum of Yesteryear, and reservations are required.