Blackridge, the old swimming hole in Wauwatosa, before the construction of Hoyt Park pool nearby.
Photos of the new pool at Hoyt Park and the area where the old swimming hole was, an area called Blackridge near the current pool that the Wauwatosa Fire Department used to flood for kids in the 1920s and 1930s.
-
- In the early 1920s, the banks of the Menomonee River west of the Wauwatosa Village were covered with veritable jungles called “yunkles” by the locals. It was within these areas that homeless men, known as hobos or tramps, set up shelters like the one pictured.
-
- This area on the Menomonee River in Hoyt Park used to be flooded by the Wauwatosa Fire Department in the 1920s and 1930s and used as a swimming hole. It was called Blackridge and was the place Buddy Schumacher was headed when he disappeared on Friday, July 24, 1925.
-
- A view of Blackridge, the old swimming hole, from the ridge immediately to the west. The railroad tracks pass close by the swimming hole.
-
- A movement to build a public swimming pool swelled after Buddy Schumacher’s death. Twelve years after Buddy died, a pool was OKd for land near Blackridge. The pool that stands there today, Tosa Pool at Hoyt Park, was built on the same site as that original pool.
-
- Blackridge, the old swimming hole in Wauwatosa, before the construction of Hoyt Park pool nearby.
