Cedarburg

Cedarburg sits close enough to Milwaukee that we almost skipped it as a day trip, but the town’s historic mill district turned out to be worth a slower visit than we’d planned. Washington Avenue runs through downtown lined with cream-city-brick storefronts — a distinctive pale yellow brick made from local clay that gave Milwaukee its old nickname “Cream City” — and the whole district has been preserved closely enough that it reads less like a restoration and more like a town that simply kept using its nineteenth-century buildings.

The Cedar Creek Settlement

The Cedar Creek Settlement, a five-story limestone woolen mill built in 1864 along Cedar Creek’s rushing millrace, now houses a winery, shops, and studio space, and we spent an afternoon touring the original mill machinery still visible in the basement before tasting through a flight of fruit wines on a deck overlooking the water. The mill ran continuously making wool blankets and yarn until the 1960s, and walking through the exposed timber beams and old grinding equipment, you can still trace exactly how the water-powered works once operated.

The covered bridge

A few miles north of downtown, the Cedarburg Covered Bridge, built in 1876, is one of only a handful of covered bridges left standing in Wisconsin, spanning Cedar Creek on a quiet county road that now dead-ends at the bridge itself, closed to vehicle traffic but open to walk across. We went at dusk, and the creek below ran clear over a rocky bed, with barn swallows darting in and out from nests tucked under the bridge’s wooden trusses.

Getting There

Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport (MKE) is the nearest, about 40 minutes south. A car is necessary — Cedarburg is an easy day trip from Milwaukee, but there’s no direct transit link, and the covered bridge sits a few miles outside the walkable downtown core.