Join our Email List!
Blog

Blog: The Natural Realm

Topics

 

 

Dates

 

 

Click for a list of blog posts

The Blue Hole

Photo Essay: The Blue Hole

April 12, 2021  |  Topics: Places

Story and photos by Eddee Daniel

Chances are you’ve never heard of Milwaukee’s Blue Hole. It’s not famous–at least not today. It was once…: infamous to be more precise.

The Blue Hole.

The Blue Hole is an old quarry in what is now the Milwaukee River Greenway. But it has a more colorful story than that. The quarry was created by a cement manufacturing company around the end of the 19th Century when they mined it for limestone to make hydraulic cement. But before they opened the quarry they had to redirect the Milwaukee River!

Moss glistening with the morning dew.
Moss glistening with the morning dew.

The limestone formation that made Milwaukee Cement Company the largest producer of hydraulic cement it the country at the time lay under the river as well as the land on both sides. So a new river channel was dug and the river redirected. Two huge quarries were mined on the west bank, one of which became a landfill and is now capped with a parking lot and a solar panel array.

Sunrise through fog.
Sunrise through fog.

The other was the Blue Hole. After the quarry closed, over a hundred years ago, it was used as a swimming hole. However, due to the irregularity of the rocks, it was extremely dangerous and led to so many drownings it acquired the nickname “suicide hole.” When Milwaukee Cement went out of business it sold the land on the east bank to the county, which established Estabrook Park and created a beach on the river as a safe alternative to the Blue Hole.

Sewer outflow 1.
Sewer outflow 1.

The beach is gone now. The Blue Hole remains, but of course no one swims there anymore. To this day there are warning signs due to the fact that combined sewer overflows into the pond are possible after a heavy rainfall.

Budding foliage.
Budding foliage.

I’ve been to the Blue Hole off and on over the past two years, as I’ve explored the Greenway during my ARTservancy residency there. But I never got a satisfying photo of it. So, when I woke up the other day to dense fog I thought, “This is the day!” Luck was with me and the fog lingered, making the old quarry pond dreamy and the colors of the new spring foliage especially intense. Here is what I managed to capture.

A Romantic interlude.
A Romantic scene.
Stepping back just a couple yards from the Romantic scene above.
Stepping back just a couple yards from the Romantic scene above.
Found object.
The Milwaukee River next to the Blue Hole.
The Milwaukee River next to the Blue Hole.
Sewer Outflow 2
Sewer Outflow 2.
Tangle
Tangle.
Graffiti
Graffiti.
This solar panel array is right next to the Blue Hole, seen as the sunrise burns through the fog.
This solar panel array is right next to the Blue Hole, seen as the sunrise burns through the fog. This sits atop the landfill that was once the other limestone quarry next to the river.
A cyclist behind the Blue Hole and the solar array.
A cyclist behind the Blue Hole and the solar array.
These two joggers are in Estabrook Park, across the river from the Blue Hole. I saw them go by in the same direction an hour apart. Apparently doing laps on the Estabrook and “Westabrook” trails–if not farther down the Greenway!
As I was heading back to my car, I met Brian fishing near the Estabrook Falls. When I held my camera up to take this shot of him he suddenly called out, saying he’d seen a 5-ft sturgeon jump. And I missed it. But I got the shot!

Eddee Daniel is a board member of Preserve Our Parks.