Menomonee Falls: Wild Rice, a River, and a Village That Grew Into a Suburb

The name Menomonee comes from the Ojibwe word for wild rice, mih-no-min-ee, which grew in abundance along the rivers and wetlands of this part of Wisconsin. The Menominee people themselves were named for this plant, and the river running through what is now Washington County was named for both the people and the food they harvested from it.

European-American settlement of the Menomonee River valley began in earnest in eighteen thirty-six when a surveyor named Garrett Vliet mapped the land just as the Wisconsin Territory was being organized. An Irishman named Patrick Rafferty arrived in eighteen thirty-seven and is credited as the first white settler in what would become the Town of Menomonee. The falls of the Menomonee River gave the settlement its name and its first economic purpose: by the eighteen forties and fifties, mills were harnessing the river's drop in elevation to power sawmills and grist mills, turning the timber and grain of the Wisconsin interior into usable products.

The Town of Menomonee was officially created by the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature in eighteen thirty-nine. The village itself was not incorporated until eighteen ninety-two, by which point the railroad had arrived and the community had grown well beyond its mill-town origins.

By the mid-twentieth century, Menomonee Falls had transformed again, this time into one of Milwaukee's principal western suburbs. The intersection of major highways here made it a natural location for commercial and industrial development, and the village grew accordingly. It is today one of the larger villages in Wisconsin, a fact that would have baffled Patrick Rafferty, who arrived alone on a riverbank in eighteen thirty-seven and saw only forest and the sound of water falling.