This year the Friends of Grant Park will join the South Milwaukee Historical Society and Friends of the Mill Pond to host the ever-popular Old Fashioned Holiday Tea. Reservations taken after 8am, Saturday, October 24th. See attached for ticket information. It promises to be a delightful start to your holiday season.
The Friends of Grant Park are proud to offer our new 2027 Calendar. This calendar features favorite vistas enjoyed by visitors of all kinds. We also introduce three local photographers you may have seen before in the park. Enjoy some of the year’s best photos of the park and its’ inhabitants, graciously submitted by many local photographers. As usual, many community events are included and all purchases benefit our mission to improve Grant Park.
Calendars are $15 each.
Available for CASH or personal check (made out to Friends of Grant Park) at:
Calendars can also be acquired in the following ways:
An earlier closure of the Oak Leaf Trail around the site of the former Cudahy Sportsmen’s Club in Warnimont Park was due to a remediation project underway by Milwaukee County Parks. The project aims to address soil contamination from years of accumulated shotgun detritus on the bluff and shoreline of Lake Michigan. The Oak Leaf Trail has since reopened; an orange fence surrounds the remediation site.
The club’s lease was terminated in 2014 for not honoring the terms of their lease to keep the property clean, and their lack of the necessary permit for operating a shooting operation into Lake Michigan as required by the WDNR and the Clean Water Act. Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors extended the termination date by one year to allow the club time to find a new location. The club elected to close its operations, and the site was finally vacated in Dec. 2015.
Further information can be found on the Milwaukee County Parks website: https://www.mkecountyparks.org/warnimont-gun-club-remediation
Saturday’s Adopt-a-Beach cleanup is postponed until Sunday, Sept. 20th, 9am to noon.
Our beach cleanup location has been moved to the Grant Park Beach parking lot. A private company group is cleaning the Seven Bridges location that day, so our registration table will be set up in the main beach parking lot, next to Ferch’s. See location on map attached below.
You can pre-register at adopt.greatlakes.org, then select “Grant Park Beach – north of playground…” Pre-registering helps us to plan for the event. We hope you can join us, even if you can only stay for an hour or so. Come on down!
The parkway has reopened between Mill Road and the beach entrance in Grant Park. It was closed between August and September to repave the roadway there. In the photo below, Oak Creek Parkway is shown in light red, and was repaved between the bright red lines on the left and right, just beyond the entrance to Grant Park beach access road.
We all look forward to 2027 when the road between the beach entrance and the entrance to Areas 5 & 6 in scheduled to be repaved. Thank you for your patience.
Yes, we are pleased to be hosting the Optimist Theatre for the third year on Sunday, July 26th. Located in Area 6 this year, a leafy outdoor setting near the lake, from 1pm to 6pm; performances change throughout the day. Drop in any time! The performance is free, but donations to the Optimist Theatre are greatly appreciated. Bring along your lawn chairs or blanket to sit on.
Here are the details:
Here’s an unusual idea for an evening of fun in Grant Park this summer… Art & Hops Night Market at the Traveling Beer Garden in Grant Park. On Thursday, June 18th from 5pm to 9pm. Bring your steins for the “Art & Hops” Market Series! At this free event, you’ll stroll through the park enjoying your brew from the nearby Traveling Beer Garden, while visiting an eclectic mix of over 30 local artists, makers of high-quality handmade items, and small businesses. A listing of participating artists can be found in the Grant Park link below.
Download the Grant Park file above to see the different art and small business booths that will be participating.
This year, the Milwaukee Public Museum is excited to partner with the Wehr Nature Center for its annual Bioblitz on Friday, June 12- Saturday June 13th.
If you’re new to the Milwaukee Public Museum’s Bioblitz, every year MPM partners with a different park, natural area, or nature preserve, and a team of volunteer surveyors (that’s you!) to count as many species as we can in 24 hours. As always, the event starts at 3pm on Friday and goes to 3 pm on Saturday, when we will report our finds. Surveyors are welcome to join us for as much or as little of the 24-hour survey period as they would like. There will be space to camp if you are planning to stay overnight. Meals, snacks, and T-shirts will be provided. There will be free activities for the public on Saturday from 10-3.
The sign-up link is here ( Bioblitz 2026-Wehr Nature Center, Franklin WI June 12-13 – Fill out form) but if you’re signing up a group, forms aren’t your speed, or have other questions, please don’t hesitate to email Julia at colby@mpm.edu. Feel free to share the link with friends or colleagues that might be interested!
Hope to see you this summer at Wehr!
In spite of the wicked weather the day (and week) before, we had fantastic participation for an Earth Day week Grant Park Beach cleanup this year. 76 adults and 26 kids stuffed bags full of cigarette butts, plastic and glass bottles, food wrappers and aluminum cans, along with some shotgun wadding washed up on the beach. Weirdest thing collected was a soggy sofa cushion. Yuk!
Q. What item takes 450 or more years to decompose in the landfill?
A. Plastic bottles never truly disappear, they break down to smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming microplastics, which can enter the drinking water supply.
We reduced our plastic bag purchases for this event by reusing large plastic bag trash from 25# bags of bird seed, potting soil and salt; and we recycled glass bottles and aluminum cans. And we offered drinking water to participants from a reusable stainless steel jug. Earth day should be every day!
A huge thank you to David Busse, a local film producer, who showed his incredible film “Beyond Our Senses: Bank Swallows” after a short meeting on January 8th. The discussion of how he produced the film was just as interesting and entertaining to the almost 50 people who gathered in the clubhouse on a foggy night. We wish him continued success in the future as he presents his film to many organizations.
“Each spring, thousands of Bank Swallows return to the Lake Michigan bluffs to build colonies, mate, and raise their young. Guided by extraordinary perceptions like tetrachromatic vision, magnetic senses, and aerial master, they navigate predators, rivals, and the relentless demands of survival in a hidden world beyond human perception.”
Here are a few reviews of the film:
From Anamarie: My thoughts are quite mixed. One thing that surprised me was that he included footage of exotic animals from Africa, etc. Why?
It was an engaging film. I loved the parallels that he drew between Swallow babies and his own baby. Very sweet.
I have exceedingly mixed feelings about the “broadcasting” of this amazing natural event. Our slopes are at such great risk. That puts the birds at the same level of risk. I truly hope that all the publicity doesn’t cause an incident of “loving life to death.” More emphasis should have been made on how fragile the entire system is. Maybe he took measures to limit the amount of damage he did while filming. If he did, he did not speak of it. That was a missed opportunity.
