ABSTRACT
Metropolitan Milwaukee is the economic heart of Wisconsin. The four-county Milwaukee metropolitan area covers less than 3 percent of the state's area, but contains 30 percent of its population and about 38 percent of its workers. Milwaukee's most significant site characteristics include its surface landforms and drainage patterns. Surface landforms are the results of a series of massive continental glaciers, the most recent of which covered the site of Milwaukee about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. The irregular, glacially formed surface within metropolitan Milwaukee has produced an irregular surficial drainage pattern. Flour milling was an important activity in Milwaukee during the years preceding and following the Civil War. Southern Wisconsin was then an important wheat-growing area. Some of the wheat was processed locally, some was moved through the port to eastern markets either as wheat or as flour, and some was shipped overseas.
