Milwaukee - geography.

« acts ranging from alternative rock to country music.

During the rest of the summer months, the park is the site of weekend festivals staged by Milwaukee’s majorethnic groups: Italian, Irish, German, African American, Polish, Mexican, Native American, and Asian.

The Great Circus Parade, featuring the world’s largest collection ofornate circus wagons, is another staple of Milwaukee’s festival season.

The Wisconsin State Fair is held annually in nearby West Allis. V RECREATION The largest single unit of Milwaukee County’s extensive park system is Whitnall Park, a vast green space that includes a botanical garden, a golf course, and a naturecenter.

The Mitchell Park Domes are three beehive-shaped glass structures that house collections of plants from tropical and arid regions, as well as changing seasonaldisplays.

The Milwaukee County Zoo exhibits animals from every continent in settings that resemble their native habitats.

Preservation of the Lake Michigan shoreline forpublic use has been a priority for decades.

One of the park system’s most popular features is Lincoln Memorial Drive, a generous strip of lakefront land that stretchesnorth from Milwaukee’s downtown. The city supports two major league sports teams: the Milwaukee Brewers in baseball and the Milwaukee Bucks in basketball.

The Brewers play in Miller Park, a newbaseball stadium with a retractable roof that opened in April 2001.

The Milwaukee Bucks’ home court is Bradley Center, a state-of-the-art facility that seats 18,700spectators. VI ECONOMY As recently as 1960, manufacturing accounted for more than 40 percent of the four-county metropolitan area’s employment.

Recessions, mergers and acquisitions, andglobal competition reduced that proportion to 24 percent by 1990.

The proportion continued to decline in the early 2000s.

Membership in labor unions suffered acorresponding decline.

Service industries have surpassed manufacturing in importance, and health care is the leading service industry in Milwaukee. Despite Milwaukee’s association with beer, machinery is the city’s most important area of manufacturing, especially precision machinery.

Among the businesses withheadquarters in Milwaukee are Rockwell Automation, which helps companies improve their performance and efficiency; Harley-Davidson, which manufacturesmotorcycles; Johnson Controls, which makes automotive equipment and building control systems; and Master Lock, which designs security products and systems.

MillerBrewing, one of the nation’s largest brewers, is the only remaining brewing company with its headquarters in the city. The service sector of the economy has shown particular growth since the 1970s.

Milwaukee’s largest nonmanufacturing employers include Northwestern Mutual LifeInsurance (one of the nation’s largest life insurers), a variety of health-care providers, and major banks.

The city also serves as a wholesale trade center for Wisconsinand for a wide region that includes parts of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Michigan. The commercial importance of the city stems in part from its function as a major port on the Great Lakes.

The port serves vessels engaged in cross-lake shipping as wellas larger vessels that enter the lakes through the St.

Lawrence Seaway.

Breakwaters that jut into Lake Michigan protect Milwaukee’s harbor area.

The three riversflowing through the city join and pass through a short deepwater canal that empties into the harbor.

Docking facilities line the canal and several of its branches.

There isa large mooring basin within the breakwater. The principal highway to Milwaukee is Interstate 94, which connects the city with Chicago to the south and Madison to the west.

Interstate 43 ties Milwaukee to otherlakeshore communities to the north.

Commercial air transportation is provided through General Mitchell International Airport. VII GOVERNMENT Milwaukee has two levels of local government—city and county—that overlap but generally complement each other.

The city of Milwaukee is headed by an electedmayor and a 17-member Common Council.

City jurisdiction extends over fire and police protection, waste removal, public housing, library services, street maintenance,and the Port of Milwaukee.

Milwaukee County, guided by an elected county executive and 25 supervisors, administers welfare programs, court and correctional systems,expressways, public parks, and Mitchell International Airport.

Officials on both levels serve four-year terms. The mayor of Milwaukee provides executive direction for the city by appointing department heads and preparing the annual budget.

The mayor also has the power toveto Common Council actions.

The Common Council reviews the mayor’s budget and may make changes to it, as well as confirm or reject mayoral appointments.

Eachcouncil member represents a district of the city and acts as its administrator, with responsibility to the citizens for the services they receive. VIII HISTORY Dozens of Native American peoples lived in the Milwaukee region over the centuries, among them the Winnebago, Sac (Sauk), Fox, Ojibwa, Ottawa, and, by 1700,Potawatomi.

They were joined in the 1600s by fur traders who made Milwaukee a minor outpost in the commercial empire of New France. Native settlement and the fur trade both came to an end in the 1830s.

Endowed with a sheltering bay and a deep river, Milwaukee attracted the attention ofspeculators who hoped to make the site a metropolis.

The first public land sale was held in 1835, and the city of Milwaukee incorporated in 1846—two years beforeWisconsin became a state.

The city’s first mayor was Solomon Juneau, a French-Canadian fur trader who had come to Milwaukee in 1818. Yankees from the eastern United States dominated pioneer Milwaukee, but 64 percent of the city’s residents were foreign-born by 1850.

Although Irish and Englishfamilies were numerous, the greatest number of immigrants came from Germany.

They established singing societies and dramatic groups that made Milwaukee the“Deutsch-Athen” (German Athens) of America, a reference to its cultural sophistication.

They also laid the foundations of a prosperous brewing industry.

By 1856 therewere more than two dozen breweries in Milwaukee, all owned and operated by German-speaking residents. Milwaukee flourished as a commercial center at first, exporting the products of Wisconsin’s farms and importing finished goods from the East and from Europe.

In theearly 1860s Milwaukee was the largest shipper of wheat on earth.

After the American Civil War (1861-1865), the city turned increasingly to manufacturing as itseconomic base.

Industrialists like Edward Allis, Henry Harnischfeger, and Frederick Layton joined the great brewing families—the Pabsts, Blatzes, Millers, and Uihleins(Schlitz)—at the top of the social order.

Allis’s company built tractors and other farm equipment and machinery, and at his death his company merged with another firmto form Allis-Chalmers, a leading manufacturer of machinery during the 20th century.

Harnischfeger cofounded P&H Mining Equipment, and Frederick Layton founded ameatpacking company and became one of Milwaukee’s leading philanthropists. The lure of industrial jobs brought thousands of new immigrants to Milwaukee, among them Poles and Italians.

By the late 1800s the city had developed a rich collectionof ethnic neighborhoods, each with its own places of worship and homegrown businesses.

During the same years, the city struggled to adjust to its new economic andsocial circumstances.

Labor unrest, political strife, and charges of corruption dominated public discourse. A reform movement gathered momentum at the turn of the century, and socialists were prominent in its leadership.

Rooted in ideals carried over from Europe anddrawing on the strength of Milwaukee’s working-class wards, the socialists captured the mayor’s office for the first time in 1910.

They would govern the city for most of. »