Just south of the Menomonee River Valley and west of the Mitchell Park Domes are Milwaukee’s National Park and Silver City neighborhoods. Ever since listener Brandon Payton-Carrillo moved to National Park from Bay View in 2020, he’s been curious about the area’s history.
“I got this old Milwaukee map from 1898, and I was trying to find, you know, my house. And on the map, there is a green space. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s weird,’” he says.
After some research, Payton-Carrillo realized his neighborhood was home to an amusement park in the late 19th century.
“I want to know more about what this park was like,” he says.
I contacted Milwaukee historian John Gurda looking for answers. We’ll get back to the park in a minute, but first, some background on the Silver City neighborhood.
“That became a very German neighborhood in the later 1800s. And then, as the years went on, it became so industrial that it attracted a lot of industrial immigrants. And these workers developed, as you would expect, a powerful thirst,” Gurda says.
With 24 saloons at one point in the 1800s, Gurda says Silver City was a: “... drinking man’s, working man’s paradise. And back in those days, the early days of industrialization there—1890s and so—you weren’t paid by direct deposit. You weren’t paid by check. You were paid in silver coin. So, these guys—whenever payday was—they’d get paid, and they would belly up to the bar, and the counters would just be awash in silver. So, I think the legend is somebody walked into one of the saloons and said, ‘This must be Silver City’—because of all the coins on the table. So that’s where ‘Silver City’ came from,” he says.
When factory workers and machinists from Harnischfeger, the Falk Plant, and the Milwaukee Road Shops weren’t spending their silver at the saloon, the nearby amusement park offered respite.
The story of the park starts in 1883, when two local promoters bought a 44-acre tract of land at what is now 27th and National. They named this rural, wooded retreat National Park, after the nearby National Soldiers’ Home.
They put in a small pond, a two-story pavilion with a ballroom, and a racetrack for trotting-horse, bicycle and eventually motorcycle races.
“You also had the Scottish Highland Games were out there. You’d have labor picnics,” Gurda says.
National Park was big enough to host fox hunts in the woods—despite objections from the Milwaukee Humane Society.
In 1885, the park’s crown jewel was built: Milwaukee’s very first roller coaster. Guests could pay a nickel for two rickety rides around the coaster’s 500-foot latticework loop. One Milwaukee Sentinel reporter who gave it a spin wrote, “The sensation produced by the first ride is gone-ness. When the car reaches the last dip in the track, it attains a fearful velocity, which sends it to the starting point again.”
“So it was, it was a kind of adrenaline back in 1885,” Gurda says.
By the end of the century, however, the park’s 16-year joyride had run its course.
“Back in 1899, a couple of East Side entrepreneurs bought the entire parcel and announced that they would plan to, as they put it, ‘cut it up into building lots.’ So, when you look at that area today, the houses are of a very uniform age. They’re all very early 1900s—turn of the 20th century,” Gurda says.
Which brings us back to Bubbler Talk question-asker Brandon Payton-Carrillo.
“My house is one of the last houses that was built in the neighborhood. This house is 100 years old this year,” Payton-Carrillo says.
Today, Silver City is known for its diverse food scene and access to the Menomonee Valley—via Three Bridges Park, the Hank Aaron Trail, and the Urban Ecology Center. Payton-Carrillo hopes to make Silver City a neighborhood also known for its music scene.
He’s a musician and the organizer of Otoñofest, Milwaukee’s first ever Latin Alternative music festival. And he wrote this song, about his neighborhood, called Silver City.
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