In the early 19th century when the first white settlers arrived, the Whitefish Bay area was controlled by Native Americans, including the Menominee, Potawatomi, and Sauk people.

The area came under the control of the United States Federal Government in 1832 when the Menominee surrendered their claims to the land by signing the Treaty of Washington.

[5] The land was organized as part of the Town of Milwaukee in 1835,[6] and for much of the 19th century, the community's main economic activities were farming and fishing.

[8] At its height, the park hosted as many as 15,000 visitors each weekend, and was once visited by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Even though the Whitefish Bay Pabst Resort closed in 1914,[7] the lakeshore land it occupied was redeveloped into seventeen lakefront residential lots,[10] including the National Register of Historic Places-listed Herman Uihlein Mansion, constructed between 1917 and 1919 for one of the sons of the president of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company.

In the first decades of the 1900s, eastern Whitefish Bay became part of the "gold coast" area that developed along the lakeshore north of Milwaukee and attracted some of the city's most affluent families.

[12] According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 2.13 square miles (5.52 km2), all of it land.