Posted 3 months ago
Militarist
(295 items)
Milwaukee Bureau of Sewers Worker's Badge
I know that this is not the kind of badge collectors dream of, but I find it to be interesting anyway. First it is a nickel plated oval about 52 mm wide made by Schwaab of Milwaukee. As to the “Bureau” of Sewers that is a mystery to me. I checked the Google site; nothing. All my Milwaukee history books, nix also. I did find that the Milwaukee Sewerage Commission was established in 1913 and that work on building sewers both for drainage since Milwaukee was built on swamp land, and waste water goes back to the late 1840's. That is why I estimate that this badge dates before 1913 and was kept in use by the sewer commission workers. The continued use could be indicated by the raised badge number. This badge was originally number 103 and later for an unknown reason the number 1 was re-engraved to a 4!
Militarist:
"I know that this is not the kind of badge collectors dream of, but I find it to be interesting anyway."
Interesting about the re-ingraving/overstrike.
Sewage control is one of those things nobody likes to think about -- until it stops working. };-)
You probably already found this, but I found it interesting:
https://milwaukeeriverkeeper.org/milwaukee-sewer-system/
Yes, Thanks! I had a cousin who as an engineer worked on the deep tunnels in the 1970's.
Interesting stuff
Militarist:
"I had a cousin who as an engineer worked on the deep tunnels in the 1970's."
Wow.
On a somewhat related note, are you at all familiar with the Seattle Underground? I see they're still conducting tours of it:
https://www.beneath-the-streets.com/
https://mb-henry.com/2018/01/29/the-seattle-underground/
Back in the day, locals knew to stay away from toilets during high tide. };-)
Not really. Saw something on the Seattle underground on tv a few years ago. Looked very interesting.
Militarist, I went on that tour years back.
Another interesting tidbit is that pipes in The Puget Sound used to be made of wood. Ya work with what ya got, and the Pacific Northwest had a lot of wood.
As a matter of fact, there used to be roads in the Milwaukee area paved with wooden planks.
Yes they did work with what they had. Milwaukee's first water distribution pipes were made of hollowed out logs in 1845.
So it wasn't just the Puget Sound that used wood for pipes.
In noodling around, I learned that wooden plank roads weren't uncommon, either.
What will astound the average person a couple hundred years from now about our time, I wonder?