By the year 1900, most of the communities in Ozaukee County had at least one small brewery to serve local saloons and hotels. Indeed, the county could have rivaled Milwaukee in the production of beer. The earliest brewery in Cedarburg, which started in 1845, was Engels and Schaefer and Co; John Weber Sr. operated the brewery. Weber's son William opened the Grafton Brewing Co. around the turn of the century. Jacob Mortiz built the first real brewery in Port Washington in a tunnel-shaped building on Wisconsin Avenue in 1858. Other small breweries in the county included the Zimmerman and Franz Co., which produced beer in Mequon in the late 1870s. A Thiensville brewery in the latter part of the century was run by August Gerland and J. Hartz. The Leonard Bodenhorfer Brewing Company near Swan and Mequon roads later became part of a fox farm operation. Another early Port Washington beer maker was David Saar who sold beer locally in the 1850s. The Lakeside Brewery, an early Port beer making operation was eventually sold to three Chicagoans who renamed it the Port Washington Brewery. Following Prohibition the brewery merged with other area companies and remained open as the Old Port Washington brewery until 1946. The Port Washington Brewery and the Grafton Brewing Co. were the only area beer makers to re-open after Prohibition was repealed in 1933.
The above photo, circa 1934, is from the collection of Gordon Engeldinger.

The year was 1918. Patrons at the Pabst Tidewater Bar sported black arm bands in protest of the era of Prohibition, which began at midnight, January 16, 1920. The "noble experiment," undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses and improve health and hygiene in America by banning the sale of alcohol, lasted from 1920-1933. Slim McGinn's is the current occupant of the Walker's Point drinking establishment.
Photo from the collection of James Kupferschmidt.