High water has touched Saukville before

The recent flooding in Saukville isn’t the first time the village has experienced high water, and the Oscar Grady Library has the photographs to prove it.

“This week’s flooding is nothing new in the history of the town,” the library posted on its Facebook page, along with some of the photos taken during that flood, last week. “But for sure it could have been worse. Luckily the water levels were less than let’s say 1959.”

Donated in 2015 by local historian Jim Peterson, the library has hundreds of photographs of Saukville floods from 1959 and other years, during which the Milwaukee River overflowed its banks, covering nearly the entire village.

“It was one of the worst,” said Art Alberts, a Grafton resident who took aerial photographs of the flood from his private plane.

Alberts’ photos are included in the Jim and John Peterson Collection, which contains about 2,000 photographs in all. It includes photos from Sheboygan County and other communities.

But the vast majority of them are of Saukville, said Martin Morante, a library assistant who helps manage the collection.

Of those, about 300 are of Saukville floods, going back to the 1920s, Morante said.

“From what I have heard, 1959 was one of the highest water levels ever in Saukville,” Morante said.

According to a 2007 Federal Emergency Management Agency study, the 1959 Milwaukee River flood was one of the worst on record, surpassed up to that time only by floods in 1918 and 1924, and was caused by early spring snow melt and unusually heavy rainfall.

Anne Kertscher, president of the Saukville Historical Society, agreed.

“There was a good one in 1975, but 1959 may have perhaps been the worst, maybe even worse than 1924 or 1918,” she said.

Kertscher said flooding was an almost annual occurrence in Saukville during the spring thaw.

“There was always flooding in the winter thaw,” she said. “They would have to unplug the (ice) dam and would have to dynamite the river to break up the ice. People would gather round to watch it. There are still a few people around who remember that.”

Many of the pictures of flooding in the library’s collection were taken by Kertscher’s father-in-law, Leroy Kertscher, who lived across from Grady Park and behind what today is the Firehouse restaurant.

“There was a creek that ran behind his house and when it flooded it formed a lake there,” she said.

Other photos in the collection document the decades of life in the village, including the downtown Triangle, Betty’s Lunch, a landmark gas station and lunch counter at the corner of highways 33 and W, the library restoration and local sports teams.

Peterson found many of the photos on eBay or from local families, Peterson said in an interview videotaped at the library in 2015 and posted online.

“He came across the photos in very random ways,” Morante said.

Peterson was not available for an interview for this story.

Digitizing the photos was made possible by grants from the ResCarta Foundation and the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.

“This collection offers a unique look into different aspects of life in a town with its own identity and dreams,” the library’s website states.

“The idea behind the collection is to make the research available to everyone,” Morante said.

Questions remain about many of the photos, Morante said, including who took them, and who or what they depict.

“We’re always interested in collecting more information about these photos,” he said.

Kertscher agreed, particularly the flood photos.

“There isn’t a lot of information on some of those photos except that it was a hell of a flood. Hopefully people will come forward and tell some of the stories that go with them,” she said.

“We need to reach out and give provenance to the photographs so they do the good that Mr. Peterson intended them to do. That’s why he collected them,” Kertscher said.

Photos are viewable online at www.oscargradylibrary.org. For more information, contact librarian Jen Gerber at jgerber@village.saukville.wi.us.