Parks Suffered Serious Flood Damage

County Executive David Crowley observes flood damage to Oak Leaf Trail in Wauwatosa. Photo taken Aug. 25, 2025 by Graham Kilmer.

Trees down everywhere, waterlogged golf courses, sinkholes, bike paths washed away.

The Milwaukee County Parks system experienced significant damage during the historic flooding more than two weeks ago. The parks department is still working to get a handle on just how much damage occurred. For now, staff are documenting the damage, hoping for support from the federal government.

Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently arrived in Milwaukee County and are assessing damage. The assessment will inform whether or not a Presidential Disaster Declaration is issued, which is critical to receiving federal disaster assistance.

Just like the rest of Milwaukee, the parks system will need federal assistance to rebuild to where it needs to be, said County Executive David Crowley.

“But as you can see, this is going to be costly damage for us moving forward,” Crowley said. “And so hopefully we’ll see some type of declaration coming from the president, but only time will tell.”

The county executive joined Parks Director Guy Smith on a tour of three sites in Wauwatosa Monday, in areas that experienced severe flooding. He visited Curry Park Golf Course, which hasn’t completely reopened and where downed trees dot the park. He also visited Jacobus Park, where four feet of water overtook the parkway and flooded a park building.

Local media were invited to join the county executive for a final stop underneath Harmonee Avenue Bridge. There, a huge chunk of trail had washed out on the south side of the Menomonee River. It is a section of the Oak Leaf Trail‘s Menomonee Line, running alongside the river from which it gets its name.

Smith said the department is still working on developing a complete cost estimate for all of the damage across the system. Some of the cost will come in the way of Parks staff labor that is being used to clean up buildings and fix infrastructure. For example, after the storm passed, staff were pulling picnic tables and glassware from the Whitnall Park Beer Garden out of the Root River.

But at each site they visited Monday, the damage was estimated at $50,000 or more, and there are dozens of sites across the system. For all public infrastructure across the county, Crowley said the latest figure he saw put the damage at more than $34 million.

Wauwatosa was particularly hard hit during the floods. Local Sup. Shawn Rolland joined Crowley and Smith Tuesday. “This has been a tough couple days for everybody in Wauwatosa,” Rolland said, “and while there are still bridges that are out, I’m hearing that there’s more opening in the coming days, so there’s good news happening all the time.”