Sep. 9, 2026 – Jones Island Tour
Members Only Tour of the Jones Island Facility
Thank you to the Milwaukee Metro Sewage District who has worked with WCC to offer a personal tour of their Jones Island facility.
🗓️ Wednesday, September 9th, 2026
⏰ 10 am (90 minutes to 2 hours based on volume of questions)
💵 FREE
🌎 Jones Island Water Reclamation Facility, 700 E Jones St, Milwaukee
Limited space of 15 people so RSVP now!
This is a walking tour roughly equivalent to a mile, with some stairs included. The facility is not ADA accessible. Everyone is required to wear long pants and closed toed shoes (no high heels). You will be provided with hard hats and safety glasses which you must wear throughout the tour. Please do not smoke or vape anywhere on Jones Island.
Tours will begin in the Maintenance Building, Training room A (We will send you a detailed map upon RSVPing)
Jones Island is a peninsula formed at the mouth of the Milwaukee River.
Historically, Jones Island was a marshy strip important to the Potawatomi, which served as a summer village. As the frontier community grew, schooners and steamships found the winding natural inlet difficult to navigate. The Army Corps of Engineers created a harbor channel through the peninsula in 1857. This “straight cut” temporarily separated the peninsula from the mainland. The resulting island became known as Jones Island after James Monroe Jones, who had opened a shipyard there in 1854. Jones Island became the main center of the city’s commercial fishing industry. Attracting immigrants, a clinic was soon built on site for the fishermen afflicted with cholera, accompanied by incineration facilities to help clear the garbage causing infectious disease.
By end of the nineteenth century, the nearby Illinois Steel Company, hoping to expand their docking facilities, acquired Jones Island and constructed a new wastewater treatment plant and updated the harbor facilities. The Hoan Bridge was erected in the 1970s to span the length of Jones Island as part of freeway efforts to connect the city’s downtown and south side. Waves gradually sealed the river inlet with sand and restored the peninsula. Yet it remains known as Jones Island to this day.
The facility is on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.