A man named Jacob Gunlach built the first brewery, a log structure, in 1846. The first beer was made the next year.
The location was not ideal so a new brewery closer to town was built in 1855. It burned in 1862 with a replacement building going up on the foundations a year later. The assorted owners of the enterprise are not perhaps of pressing concern but from the Civil War era on to its final closure in 1943 the Semrad Brothers were the proprietors.
The later brewery has been demolished recently but this day our search was actually for the earlier one.
When looking for a brewery site, here's a good clue....drive out Brewery Road and look along Brewery Creek!
Here my brother is again being distracted looking for bricks. All he found were some generics.
When you start finding more bricks and begin to find broken 1890s bottle shards, you might be getting close....
By this point my boots had gotten full of water and sand so I was plodding upstream without having to worry too much about keeping dry. Hmmmm, I wonder if we are getting close?
Obviously these artifacts were not from the 1840s brewery but the later version was not far off. It appears that the creek was a favorite dumping spot for all sorts of cast off items.
Soon I spied the early cave peeking out at me.
I have to say, this is the crappiest brewery cave I have found to date. Small and half full of stagnant water. Yuck.
This was just a bad site selection. I wonder if the creek formerly ran in a much deeper bed because the floor of this cave is below the current water level. No wonder they moved to a site on higher land after a few years. I should think they lost a few barrels of product to spring flooding every year.
I can't imagine anybody would want to visit this one, but it is easy to find. Highland Wisconsin. Go out of town on Brewery Street. You don't have to go very far, just after the right angle turn there is a tiny road that crosses the creek going south. The cave is on the south bank quite nearby. A foundation that might be part of the original brewery - it burned in 1880 - is on the north bank.
The house that is up the hill from the existing Brewery was the house my dad was born and raised in. He lived there with my grandparents and my great-uncle Anthony J Pusch..from the Semrad-Pusch brewing company.My grandfather was John Kratochvil and my grandmother was Emma Pusch.
ReplyDeleteI haven’t found the members you’ve specifically mentioned, or any Pusch. But I recently learned that my family can be traced back to Semrad & Kratochvil!!
DeleteThis is great information. I'm a Semrad (maiden name) and I have collected quite a few items from the brewery. My dad, Francis Semrad was born in Highland and lived there for a number of years before his family moved to Madison. His Grandfather, I believe, was John Semrad, one of the brewery owners. My dad has lots of newspaper articles and some memorabilia from the brewery. He remembers hanging around there as a child.
ReplyDeleteI never heard about the cave and the creek, so I found this very informative. Thank you for writing about the brewery.
Julie Semrad Chrisler
Thank you for sharing that story! I’ve recently learned that I come from Semrads, that’s how I stumbled onto this article. Not sure where you fit into my family tree yet
DeleteA nice summary of the Highland breweries can be found at:
ReplyDeletehttps://manifold.umn.edu/read/untitled-c03b01eb-d71f-472b-a159-cb7ce235e1d5/section/a9ee5c3f-da86-4043-8028-7565719385f7
you have to scroll down to Highland
There's quite a bit more yet to be learned....
Tim Wolter
My great grandmother was Maria (Mary) Semrad (1884) who married Joseph Stepanek. This was a great find to knowing more local and family history.
ReplyDelete