Milwaukee Pierhead Light

Built in 1872. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

From the record

“The Milwaukee Pierhead Light is an active lighthouse located in the Milwaukee harbor, just south of downtown. This aid to navigation is a 'sister' of the Kenosha North Pier Light.”
Wikipedia article Milwaukee Pierhead Light, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 300 National Register listings published here for Milwaukee County · listed in 2012 · category: Structure · built in 1872.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. Milwaukee Harbor entry N. pier, SE. corner of H.W. Maier Festival Park, Milwaukee, 53202
When was it listed? November 2012
Category. structure
Also known as. Light Stations of the United States MPS
When was it built? 1872
National Register reference number. 12000971 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

18 since 2018

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 18 fires within 5 miles of Milwaukee Pierhead Light between 2018 and 2020, burning about 11 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	13
Smoking	2
Debris and open burning	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Recreation and ceremony	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
5 August 2018	Smoking	1.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	1383
11 August 2018	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	1806070
24 July 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	1762641
19 July 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	1805394
19 June 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	1750036
3 May 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	1734269
8 April 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	1484632
26 April 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	20117

Every fire recorded in Milwaukee County

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Milwaukee Pierhead Light: 1 plant. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Iron. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Dcs Mill	Iron	Plant

Every working recorded in Milwaukee County

Storms near this property

60 of 77 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Milwaukee, the town this property stands in, in 77 storm reports between 1993 and 2026: 33 thunderstorm wind, 20 hail, 9 flood, 8 lightning. The reports record 6 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
February 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	3 hurt, $25,000	no account filed
July 2010	Lightning	West Milwaukee	2 hurt	Two sisters, 25 years old and 30 years old, attempting to run home from a nearby sandwich shop, were injured when struck by lightning. They were taken to a nearby hospital and admitted for treatment of their injuries.
July 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	1 hurt, $1,000	no account filed
July 1997	Lightning	Milwaukee	$1,000,000	Lightning caused a massive fire at a towing business on the south side of Milwaukee. The building and its contents were a total loss.
June 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$200,000	no account filed
June 1999	Flash Flood	Milwaukee	$75,000	no account filed
August 2016	Flash Flood	West Milwaukee	$50,000	Two to three inches or rain in approximately 1 hour resulted in the flooding of creeks and streets. Several cars were stalled or stranded, especially on Layton Avenue just west of Howell Avenue. A car drove into a drainage ditch when the driver could not tell where the parking lot ended and a drainage ditch began. Knee deep water was reported on the streets. Some basements flooded, and manhole covers were reported blown off by the overflowing storm sewers.
July 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$50,000	Powerful wind gusts to an estimated 61 knots (70 mph) took the roof of a lumberyard off, which took down nearby power-lines. Around 45 customers were without power for a time as a result. Large trees and powerlines were toppled.
July 2006	Flash Flood	Milwaukee	$50,000	Two lanes on westbound and eastbound I-94 were closed due to flash flooding near the Marquette Interchange. Some water damaged occurred to construction equipment, and there was some soil erosion.
September 2005	Flash Flood	Milwaukee	$50,000	Widespread flooding across most of Milwaukee County. Several feet of water was reported on Interstate 43 at North Avenue, causing it to close for several hours. Three cars were stranded as water rose very rapidly. One to three feet of water was also reported on roadways at the UW-Milwaukee campus. On the UW-Milwaukee campus, over 4 inches of rain fell during the evening. Some basements were flooded in low lying areas, resulting in damage to contents.
August 1993	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$50,000	Over extreme southeast Wisconsin isolated severe thunderstorms knocked down trees and power lines and produced a funnel cloud and three waterspouts.
May 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$50,000	no account filed
April 2026	Thunderstorm Wind	West Milwaukee	$30,000	A large tree down on cars at the intersection of 20th St. and West Greenfield Ave.
September 2000	Lightning	Milwaukee	$30,000	no account filed
July 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$30,000	no account filed
May 1999	Flash Flood	Milwaukee	$25,000	no account filed
June 1997	Lightning	South Milwaukee	$20,400	Lightning struck an antenna and traveled into garage, setting fire to two cars, a truck camper, motorcycle and other things in the garage.
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$20,000	Trees and power lines down on West Tower Rd.
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$20,000	Trees and power lines down on 25th and Wells.
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$20,000	Trees and power lines down on Wright and Holton.
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$20,000	Trees and power lines down on 76th street.
June 2005	Hail	South Milwaukee	$20,000	Hail dented cars and siding, and broke a patio glass table top along with a window.
August 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$20,000	no account filed
August 1998	Flood	Milwaukee	$20,000	no account filed
July 2006	Lightning	Milwaukee	$15,000	Lightning struck a home in the 1800 block of W. Greenfield Ave., resulting in a roof fire.
June 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	South Milwaukee	$12,000	Numerous trees and tree limbs down at Grant Park.
August 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	North Milwaukee	$11,000	no account filed
June 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	South Milwaukee	$10,000	Numerous trees and branches down.
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$10,000	Trees and power lines down on N. 13th St.
September 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	West Milwaukee	$7,000	Downed tree on top of a car.
May 2000	Lightning	Milwaukee	$5,000	no account filed
May 1999	Lightning	Milwaukee	$4,000	no account filed
May 1999	Lightning	Milwaukee	$4,000	no account filed
May 2024	Flood	West Milwaukee	$3,000	A car lost control and hit the median wall after driving through deep, ponded water during heavy rain in the left lane of southbound Interstate 94/43 on the high rise bridge. The lane was briefly closed while Milwaukee Public Works addressed the high water issue.
September 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$2,000	no account filed
June 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	South Milwaukee	$1,000	A rotted 2-3 foot diameter tree snapped at its base.
May 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$1,000	no account filed
February 1999	Flood	Milwaukee	$1,000	no account filed
July 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$1,000	no account filed
July 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	$800	no account filed
June 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	North Milwaukee	$500	Two large tree branches down.
May 2024	Hail	South Milwaukee	-	Photo provided on Facebook.
May 2024	Hail	South Milwaukee	-	Photo provided on Facebook.
April 2006	Hail	Milwaukee	-	Reported at 27th and Oklahoma.
April 2006	Funnel Cloud	South Milwaukee	-	A trained spotter reported a cold air funnel cloud at the intersection of Highway 32 and Drexel.
April 2006	Hail	Milwaukee	-	Report provided by WISN TV 12 studios.
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	-	Trees down.
July 2006	Hail	Milwaukee	-	Some small tree branches down due to hail.
March 2005	Hail	Milwaukee	-	Located on the UW-Milwaukee campus.
September 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	-	Measured by the Fox TV-6 school network site at UW-Milwaukee. Large tree branches down.
July 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	-	A line of severe thunderstorms accompanied by hail up to one inch in diameter and winds to 60 mph knocked down many trees and power lines and caused minor property damage across southern Wisconsin. Several funnel clouds were also observed.
May 2024	Hail	South Milwaukee	-	no account filed
May 2024	Hail	South Milwaukee	-	no account filed
April 2016	Hail	West Milwaukee	-	no account filed
August 2015	Hail	South Milwaukee	-	no account filed
November 2013	Hail	South Milwaukee	-	no account filed
July 2006	Hail	Milwaukee	-	no account filed
August 2006	Hail	Milwaukee	-	no account filed
June 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	-	no account filed
June 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Milwaukee	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Milwaukee County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Milwaukee Breakwater Light	0.7 miles	2011
East Oregon and South Barclay Industrial Historic District	0.7 miles	2014
Historic Third Ward District	0.7 miles	1984
Pittsburgh Plate Glass Enamel Plant	0.8 miles	2009
Harley-Davidson Motor Company Factory No. 7	0.8 miles	2020
Baumbach Building	0.8 miles	1983

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 12000971 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Milwaukee County	All 300 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.