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Milwaukee
A Great Lakes port on Lake Michigan
Milwaukee sits on the western shore of Lake Michigan, where three rivers — the Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnickinnic — meet and empty into the lake, forming a natural harbor. That harbor made it a major Great Lakes port, shipping the grain and goods of Wisconsin out across the lakes. Settled in the 1830s by waves of German and other European immigrants, it became famous as a brewing capital, its name long tied to beer.
The lakefront, lined with parks and bluffs, faces the vast inland sea of Lake Michigan, and the rivers thread through downtown. The surrounding country is the gently rolling farm and dairy land of southeastern Wisconsin. The largest city in the state, Milwaukee anchors a metro of more than a million and a half on the Great Lakes, less than 90 miles north of Chicago.