Kilbourn Park

This is the best sight of the skyline in the city, excluding coming over the Hoan where you can’t exactly stop and take in the sights.
I’ve been a fan of this place since I moved to Milwaukee a few years ago. It’s the first city park I «discovered» and it’s been an important part of my experience here. It’s where I would take visitors from out-​of-​town before I had enough experience to know what to do and where to go. When I lived on the East Side and Later in Riverwest, I’d come down here to watch the fireworks in July. The place was always a mess; police everywhere, the occasional crazy person hollering at everyone around him/​her, but I remember nonetheless this being the site of the first real sense of «community» I had in Milwaukee.
See, when I moved here, at first I hated it. I had some extremely bad landlords and have been a victim of criminals at well above the average rate. I found that Milwaukee was a tough nut to crack in terms of making new friends. There was a time in which I didn’t blame a single white-​flighty suburbanite for leaving town, because my experience here had been singularly in the bad direction. I was pretty jaded about Milwaukee. I still am in some respects – to the chagrin of the most blinded members of this city’s cheerleading squad – but my opinion has shifted to be more positive than negative as I’ve been able to make friends, move to a quieter neighborhood, and really experience the city.
My first time watching the fireworks here was a start to that transformation. It’s the first time I felt myself actually participating in the community here. It’s the first time I’ve felt Milwaukee invited me to just «hang out» with others from my neighborhood. Future events would come – Rockerbox (when it was on Center Street, at least), Locust Street Fest, Chill on the Hill – but fireworks at Kilbourn Park was the first.
I was here last night again, and the magic of the place is a bit duller these days but I still feel a tinge of happiness when I look over downtown from way up here. I imagine if I ever move away and then come back to visit, this place will be on my list of destinations.

Does anyone remember when this place wasn’t really a park? When it had a vaguely menacing barbed wire fence around it and weird antennas and signs that said keep out, but then also these flowers beds on the eastern side of it?
I think there might have been some weird mystique around it, like maybe there were aliens or nuclear experiments gone awry being hidden up there. (Then again, it was back in the 90s and I was watching a lot of X-​files [man, that was good TV] so that might explain where I’m getting this idea from.) Sort of kidding here, but I remember never understanding what was going on up there & why it was off limits to the public. I strictly identified it to people as «you know that big hill on North Avenue you have to go around to get to my apartment?»
Anyhow…back in 2014…
So, today I turned down some street in Riverwest and came upon the park by happenstance. I stopped in my tracks, turned and looked around – because it occurred to me I had NEVER been on that street near the park in all the nearly two decades I lived here. Crazy!
Now, because I’m a big nerd I googled the history of it and found out that it used to be a reservoir (so giant body of water atop the hill.) Then it was filled in sometime after the 1940s and briefly was a park with tennis courts etc until that park was closed and it was rendered off limits in the 1990s (the X-​File years, I’ll call them.)
And today its a park again. With a playground and basketball courts and paved paths leading you up to a truly spectacular 360 degree view. From the top of that hill, North Avenue to the lake looks like a street in San Francisco.
But in doing my very important internet historical research on the park, I also learned that it is, after all, a somewhat secluded park in the middle of the city… so daylight hours are probably the best (and safest) times to check it out.
Still, an unparalleled view of the city in a place with quite a bit of historical significance.