Jones Island, Milwaukee's Fishing Village

This narrow peninsula jutting into Milwaukee Harbor was once home to one of the most unusual communities in the American Midwest. From the eighteen seventies through the early twentieth century, Jones Island housed a self-contained fishing village of Kashubian immigrants from northern Poland, alongside Germans, Scandinavians, and other newcomers. They built their own shanties without city permits, fished Lake Michigan commercially, and operated largely outside city jurisdiction.

At its peak the village held several hundred residents. The city of Milwaukee spent decades trying to remove them, finally succeeding in the nineteen twenties through condemnation and buyout, with the last resident leaving in nineteen forty-three. A sewage treatment plant now occupies much of the island.

Milwaukee recognized Jones Island as a city landmark in nineteen seventy-four for its role as a rare example of an informal ethnic waterfront community that shaped the city's early industrial harbor identity.