Milwaukee has an abundance of parks, and city residents frequent them to seek respite from the bustling urban life and spend time with nature. While Milwaukee’s smallest park offers none of these things, it comes with the history of an oft-overlooked neighborhood and historic group of people in this city. But first you’ll have to find it.
All photos by Joe Powell for The Squeaky Curd unless otherwise noted.
Kaszube’s Park is by far the tiniest park in Milwaukee county; it features a whopping 6 trees, 1 picnic table, and an anchor. Many longtime Milwaukeeans know the south side was predominantly Polish, but few (save this active Facebook group) remember the low-land Polish people known as Kaszubes who inhabited Jones Island.
Jones Island in September 1938, present-day Kaszube’s Park. Image from Greg Schultz on Facebook.
From the 1870s, and for 70-some years after, immigrants from a small Baltic Sea region came and squatted on Jones Island, living in close quarters and turning the unwanted swampland into a fishing village to remind them of home.
Captain Felix Struck, last inhabitant of Jones Island. Image from Greg Schultz on Facebook.
This small, watery peninsula (it’s not an island) was a fish fry destination for old-timey Milwaukeeans and also served as a popular tavern district. In fact, Kaszube’s Park is supposedly located on the site of the tavern owned by Jones Island’s first-born son and final permanent resident: Captain Felix Struck.
Most Kaszubes did not own the land on Jones Island: the city simply didn’t care anyone was there. But when Milwaukee wanted another harbor (and a place to send their wastewater and, eventually, road ice), it was the free-loading Kaszubes who had to make way. Most of the 1,800 inhabitants dispersed in the 1920s throughout the Bay View area, though Capt. Struck stayed until the 40s.
Image from Google Maps
The park remains to remind us of one of the least-understood and mostly-forgotten ethnic groups in Milwaukee. It’s a bit poetic that the park is so small and so remote. The only way to access it is via an industrial entrance, though in fact it’s a public road: Carferry Drive. Follow the signs from I-794 that lead you to “Port of Milwaukee” and you’ll happen upon it.
You’ll see stacks of shipping containers, mountains of road salt, miles of train tracks, and a skinny oak tree above a red sign and an old anchor bearing “S.S. Lisa” graffiti but actually cast with the name “Powell – 1852” (total coincidence). Do yourself a favor and track this little piece of Milwaukee history down, take a seat on the bench, and imagine how much fish those Kaszubes could’ve preserved with the mounds of salt now residing on their home island.
Published Dec 11, 2014. Updated Dec 14, 2017.