Milwaukee

Milwaukee is a city in southeastern Wisconsin, on the western shore of Lake Michigan where three rivers meet. Known as Brew City, it was home to the breweries of Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Miller in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Solomon Juneau, a French-Canadian fur trader, and his rivals Byron Kilbourn and George Walker founded separate settlements on the rivers in the 1830s, and they joined as the city of Milwaukee in 1846. The following decades brought large numbers of immigrants from Germany, with their beer, choral societies and gymnastics clubs. Factories along the rivers made engines, tools and machinery, and the city became an industrial center of the Midwest. In 1903 William Harley and the Davidson brothers built their first motorcycle in a wooden shed in Milwaukee.

Harley-Davidson, the motorcycle maker, has its head office in the city. Rockwell Automation, based in Milwaukee, makes control systems for factories. Molson Coors brews Miller beer at its large brewery in the Miller Valley on the west side, where the old caves once used to store beer are shown on tours.

The Milwaukee Art Museum, on the lakefront, has a pavilion by Santiago Calatrava whose white wings open and close over its glass hall. The Harley-Davidson Museum shows motorcycles from the first shed-built model to modern bikes. Summerfest, a music festival held each summer since the late 1960s, fills the grounds on the lakefront with stages. The Milwaukee Bucks play basketball at Fiserv Forum, and fans gather in the plaza outside during games. The Pabst Mansion, built for the brewer Frederick Pabst in the 1890s, is kept as a museum.