Milwaukee County’s goal is to enrich your life by providing essential services that meet your needs and those of your family, neighbors, co-workers and friends.
We enhance the quality of life in Milwaukee County through great public service.
Milwaukee County is home to over 950,000 people living in one of 19 communities, which range in size from the City of Milwaukee, with 595,000 residents, to the Village of River Hills, with roughly 1,600 residents.
Still a manufacturing stronghold, the region features 16 Fortune 1000 companies and thousands of others in the financial services, medical device, hospitality and retailing industries.
Find information about things to do and happenings in Milwaukee County.
Milwaukee County Parks cover 15,000 acres, and much of it is teeming with wildlife and native plants. Natural areas include prairie grasslands, woodlands, ephemeral wetlands, and of course, beaches along the shores of Lake Michigan.
In 2019, the Milwaukee County park system was designated as an Important Bird Area, one of only 2,700 sites in the United States. Milwaukee County is home to over 100 bird species and another 150 species migrate through the County. The Oak Leaf Birding Trail map provides a guide to hotspots. For those new to birding, Wehr Nature Center is the perfect place to start. Pick up identification guides in the nature center and go on a bird walk.
Find a Birding Hotspot
Watch the sunrise over Lake Michigan or keep an eye out for visiting ducks and waders at nine beaches in Milwaukee County Parks. Popular spots include Tietjen Beach in Fox Point, the secluded beach at the end of the Seven Bridges Trail, and Bradford Beach in downtown Milwaukee. Lagoons and rivers around the County also provide great opportunities for wildlife watching.
Find a Beach
About 30 trails offer the ideal way to explore the parks' natural areas, including maple woods, prairie grasslands and ephemeral wetlands. Use the soft trails to access the County's state-designated natural areas — Cudahy Nature Preserve and Warnimont Fens. Trails at Cudahy meander through a designated Old Growth Forest among towering oaks and maples. Trails at Warnimont do not go through the sensitive plant communities of the fens but do trace the top edge of the bluff, giving panoramic views of Lake Michigan and the fens on the bluff faces below.
Find a Nature Trail
Get up close and personal with native species by visiting the resident wildlife at Wehr Nature Center in Whitnall Park, or visit Urban Ecology Centers at Riverside Park and Washington Park, or Three Bridges Park for nature programming and events.
Explore Wehr Nature Center
Milwaukee County Parks are home to a wide range of wildlife, from white-tailed deer to prairie crayfish (pictured). Use the iNaturalist website and app to see and record recent wildlife sightings in the parks.
Visit iNaturalist
Bees are vital to our ecosystem, as well as the pollination of crops, yet our bee populations are struggling. To give bees a boost, we manage several hives throughout the County.
9480 W. Watertown Plank Road Wauwatosa, WI 53226 (414) 257-PARK (7275) Parks E-News Signup
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