Menomonee Valley

Because of its easy access to Lake Michigan and other waterways, the neighborhood has historically been home to the city's stockyards, rendering plants, shipping, and other heavy industry.

In the 1960s, Father James Groppi organized protests against segregation in Milwaukee and led a number of fair housing marches across this symbolic divide.

Abundant wild rice once grew in the marshland of the confluence and along the shores of the river, which the Menomonee (also spelled Menominee) Indians named for its "good seed."

Reshaping of the valley began with the railroads built by city co-founder Byron Kilbourn to bring product from Wisconsin's farm interior to the port.

Grain elevators were built and, due to Milwaukee's dominant German immigrant population, breweries sprang up around the processing of barley and hops.

By 1879 meat packing became the most important industry in the city, and the Menomonee Valley was a critical supply point for the likes of John Plankinton, Frederick Layton and Philip Armour.

Heavy pollution and noxious odors became a problem as early as 1874 when a distillery was charged for producing "a nuisance simply stupendous in character."

The city also built an ill-conceived garbage crematory in 1890 that, along with the factories, locomotives and foundries, pumped clouds of acrid smoke which covered the valley in a thick layer of soot.

After World War II the economics of the valley declined because of a shift from rail and ship transportation to the interstate highways.

Marquette University built an athletic field across the river just south of the main campus, and Emmpak Foods helped to beautify the area with a sculpture garden.

[5] Using leftover fill from the Marquette Interchange reconstruction project, the new park also includes landforms shaped to resemble typical glacial features from the area's geologic past, such as kames, drumlins, and eskers.

[6] The abandoned 140-acre (0.57 km2) Milwaukee Road yards have been made into a business park with an innovative storm water runoff buffer using native plants.

"[7] Two of the landmark smoke stacks standing in Chimney Park to memorialize what were once the largest rail yards in the nation have since been torn down because they were too unstable.