The Mysterious Disappearance of Pike Creek

Christopher Allen: Faculty Advisor, Kathleen GilloglySociology / Anthropology | University of Wisconsin-Parkside

Conclusions and Further Research

Despite the major role that Pike Creek has played in Kenosha’s founding and growth, its history is a largely forgotten one. Our preliminary oral history work will continue seeking people’s lived experiences with the river to supplement newspapers and archival research. Further goals include public presentations to raise public

AbstractThis poster describes my research into the

social history and present-day status of Pike Creek, a buried urban river in the post-industrial Great Lakes town of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Though many residents have little or no knowledge of the river, it possesses significance to the city in both the past and the present.

The urban development that reshaped the river from critical resources to development nuisance to a fragmented series of streams and drainage channels offers insight into waterways on scales from individual to regional.

Site of Health and Illness

"Pike Creek...is filled with putrefying substances causing an unbearable stench and filling the air with obnoxious odors and germs calculated to breed pestilence and disease. …the people living within its vicinity are liable to be at any time stricken with fatal diseases.” -Board of Health Report, 1895

Pike Creek has hosted a water cure (part of a 19th century health care fad), a tuberculosis sanitarium, and, to the present day, the Brookside nursing home. It has also been a site of tremendous industrial pollution, and continues to be ecologically degraded due to development and agriculture.

Rise and Fall of Industry – the Pike Creek Harbor Basin

“Pike Creek…at once suggested the idea of a commodious harbor for the prospective commerce of Lake Michigan.” - Pioneer settler and State Legislator Hon. Michael M. Frank

Former Harbor Basin, 2014Allen Tannery ca. 1920

Allen Tannery on Harbor Basin, late 1800s

Industry around Pike Creek’s harbor included the country’s largest tannery, the Simmons Bedding Company, several incarnations of Kenosha’s automobile industry, and more. In the 1950s and ‘60s, it was culverted and buried, while the basin was filled in for retail and parking space.

Kenosha's Pike Creek was the community's early central organization feature. Its presence made the settlement possible and catalyzed industrial development by facilitating water-borne commerce. In the 150 years since, it has played numerous roles. It has been a site of both industry and recreation. It has been perceived as both healthful, and as a health hazard. It has been a catalyst for development, and a developmental

A Paradoxical Existence

Boat Houses on North Arm of Harbor, 1884

Kenosha Municipal Golf Course, 2015

Connecting Disparate Aspects of the CityThe Pike Creek Watershed spans the distance from the site of Kenosha’s original 1830 settlement to modern tract housing miles away from the Lake. Though the creek unifies the community physically, it does little to unify the community in the minds of its inhabitants. Many do not realize these channels and culverts are more than developmental flotsam and jetsam.

Stonefield Subdivision in Headwaters Area 2014

Jamestown Park Culvert, 2014

Case Study of Transformation: Bonnie Hame

*ca. 1860: Farmland and Equestrian Track

*ca. 1880 – 1900: Local Industrialist Edward Bain’s “Bonnie Hame” Country Estate

*ca. 1924. Bonnie Hame Subdivision platted, Bain school built.

*ca. 1930: Land drained; Pike Creek branch vanishes.

*ca. 1934: Nash Motors Paint Shop and Parking Lot

*ca. 1942: Wartime subsidized worker housing, largely African-American. Occupied through 1960s.

*ca.1960 – 1980: American Motors/Chrysler parking lot.

*ca. 1980 –present: vacant lot.

Bonnie Hame Area Plat Map: 1931

Bonnie Hame: Edward Bain’s Country Estate ca. 1887

Western portion of Bonnie Hame site: 2014

The built environment can feel static and unchanging, but change is at the heart of what makes a city. Pike Creek has been a place of tremendous transformations through the course of Kenosha’s existence, examined here through the lens of the Bonnie Hame site.

Methods

*Archival research with city records, newspapers, and other documents.*Fieldwork to locate and photograph extant portions of Pike Creek.

*Oral history interviewing with residents.*GIS-facilitated diachronic spatial analysis.

Pike Creek Valley ca. 1870

Culverting and Fill of Creek Valley, ca. 1965

awareness of the historical, social, and environmental aspects of the creek. Unlike the nearby Root and Pike Rivers, little thought has been given to environmental remediation of Pike Creek; we posit that a remembered creek will be a more thoughtfully-managed one.

“wasteland." Most strikingly, it is simultaneously a geographically unified watershed, and a series of conceptually fragmented and disconnected streams.

The location of the cure…is situated in one of the most pleasant cities in the West, which for Health, Pure Air and Water cannot be surpassed.” (emphasis original) - Kenosha Water Cure advertisement, 1858

“Whereas the City of Kenosha will soon complete the first phase of filling Pike Creek…the Mayor and Common Council…will offer to lease land on which a store can be erected.” - Kenosha Common Council Resolution, 1959

“Pike Creek valley…is practically waste space in the heart of the city, but…could be made an asset to the surrounding property by the development of a parkway through it.” - City Plan of Kenosha, 1925

Kenosha Water Cure, ca. 1858

The plant of the city gas works…discharges into the river 50,000 gals. Or more daily of tar products…” Sanitary Engineer’s Report, 1909