CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION & COMMUNITY
HISTORY
Town of Merton
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INTRODUCTION
In 2004, the Town Board and the Planning Commission of the Town of Merton, recognizing an increased need to
exert greater control and oversight to changing land uses and the land development process, appointed a Land Use
Plan Update Committee to update the existing 1998/1974 Master Land Use Plan to address new issues and
challenges. The Land Use Plan Update Committee was directed to work with the Town Planner, seek assistance
from Waukesha County Parks and Land Use, Southeastern Regional Planning Commission and other planning
consultants as needed. The Committee consisted of a Town Board Member, two (2) Plan Commission Members,
the Town Clerk, six (6) citizen members, and a representative from the Town Highway Department. The
committee participated in a number of working meetings with planning staff, conducted a brief diagnostic review
of the existing plan to identify the extent of necessary updating; participated in an Issues and Concerns Visioning
Session, including map visioning, facilitated by an outside planning consultant, reviewed various data including
summary from 2 focus groups and survey results from the Spring 2004 Parks and Open Survey mailed to over 800
households. The staff worked with Waukesha County Parks and Land Use to obtain updated maps of various
resources and land uses in the Town and Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Plan Commission for land use
information. The staff conducted an inventory and analysis of existing land uses in the Town, drafted the final
Land Use Plan document, including ways to implement said plan, which was then presented at a public hearing
for Town approval.
The Town of Merton was aware that it would be necessary for the Town of Merton to update their Land Use Plan
to comply with Smart Growth Law by 2010. The Smart Growth Law, which went into effect in October of 1999,
requires that a comprehensive plan contain the following nine (9) elements:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Issues and Opportunities
Housing Elements
Transportation
Utilities and Community Facilities
Agricultural, Natural and Cultural Resources
Economic Development
Intergovernmental Cooperation and Public Participation
Land Use
Implementation Plan
Under the new law, a governing body must adopt written procedures for public participation, must provide wide
distribution of proposed comprehensive plan and must hold at least one (1) public hearing. The smart growth law
also requires that the governing body adopt the plan as an ordinance.
The Town of Merton agreed to work with the participating 28 municipalities (villages, cities, towns, within
Waukesha County,) Waukesha County Parks and Land Use, SEWRPC to update the Waukesha County
Development Plan and to incorporate local plans within the County Plan to comply with Smart Growth
Legislation. Chapters of the Waukesha County Land Development Plan were presented at noticed Plan
Commission Meetings throughout the advisory planning timeline.
In addition, in the Spring and Summer of 2008, the Town of Merton Planning Work Group met in various open
sessions to review the existing Town Plan 2020 adopted in 2005, the existing Land Use Map and the Waukesha
County Recommended Land Use Plan Map. The Plan Commission reviewed and commented on the work of the
Planning work group. The chapters and land use plan map were presented and discussed at numerous Plan
Commission Meetings in 2008.
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COUNTY PARTNERSHIP
The Town of Merton was one of the twenty-nine of the 37 local government units in Waukesha County that
signed cooperative agreements to work together on a county comprehensive plan update. Table I-2 lists the
project municipal partners. These communities agreed to collaborate and develop a comprehensive plan that
addresses both countywide issues and their own local concerns. This collaborative effort will improve
intergovernmental cooperation and utilize resources efficiently. Each community appointed a representative to
serve on the county comprehensive planning advisory committee and four subcommittees were established for the
major elements of the comprehensive plan process. The six major issues addressed by the subcommittees were
utility and community facilities, agriculture, natural, and cultural resources, economic development,
intergovernmental cooperation, transportation and land use. Each subcommittee developed a set of
implementation recommendations for their respective planning elements.
HISTORY
Community History
In 1837, a Yankee named Ralph Allen staked his claim just north of what is now the Village of Hartland. He
shared his cabin with two other bachelors while they cleared their own land, and was Merton Township’s first
white settler. The area had previously been populated by Native Americans, who camped along the rivers and
lakes during their journeys north and south.
In 1841, another settler, a young man from Sweden, Gustav Unonius, accompanied by his wife, her maid and a
fellow Swede they had met in Milwaukee, was looking for land in Waukesha County. He staked a claim on the
east shore of Pine Lake, calling it the “most lovely lake we had ever seen.” He called the settlement New Uppsala
after a Swedish university town, and pursued his dream to establish a Swedish cultural and intellectual center on
the frontier. He attracted an assortment of nobles, theologians, merchants, teachers and military officers.
His choice of land was not a practical location for a settlement. The lake shore was stony and the soil
unproductive. The colony failed almost as soon as it was started. The people who were accustomed to luxury
ended up feeding the straw from their mattresses to their horses. Noblemen worked for blacksmiths, and one
baron was hired as a cook.
Unonious himself became the Nashotah House Seminary’s first graduate and was ordained an Episcopal priest,
leading some of his countrymen away from the Lutheran Church. Within a decade or two of its inception, “New
Uppsala” had vanished.
During the struggle of Unonious and his colony, the rest of the township was filling in with settlers from other
countries. European immigrants formed a high percentage of the population. Norwegians settled across Pine
Lake from the Swedes, and they did not function as a Scandinavian unit. The lake divided them as did the Dovre
Mountains in Sweden. Irish farmers dominated the northern section of the township, with twenty-one Irishmen
staking their claims in 1842. The claims averaged 80 acres each near the northern boundary of the county. The
reason the Irish passed over all the available land between their claims and Milwaukee seems best summed up by
Father Lincoln Whelan, an Irish priest who wrote, “They may have been misled by a land speculator, a fellow
Irishman, who was said to have “enough mouth for two rows of teeth.” Father Whelan went on to say, “They
somewhere got the notion that stones are a sign of fertile soil…As farmers, the Irish were no good for king or
county.”
The central and southeastern sections of the township were settled by a mixture of Yankees and Englishmen with
a few Scots and Dutchmen, and a large number of Danes.
The villages that served the settlers were located where water power was available. Mills were built on the
Oconomowoc River at Monches, North Lake, Stone Bank and Merton. North Lake was the last because it was
located on “school land.” The sixteenth section of every township was withheld from the original market and sold
later to provide funding for school construction.
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The villages were more ethnically mixed than the rural areas. The Scots in the Stone Bank area started a
Presbyterian Church. The Monches miller was a Swiss immigrant, and a Dane built the brewery in North Lake.
Railroads played a large role in developing the township with the Milwaukee and Watertown Railroad on the
south in the Delafield Township. The Danes and Norwegians around Pine Lake cleared timber and sold it to the
railroad for fuel. Merton Township got its own railroad in 1899, when the Milwaukee and Superior Railroad
came through Merton to North Lake. The railroad was facetiously referred to as the Misery and Suffering
Railroad. The line was originally intended to go all the way to Superior, Wisconsin, but never got any further
than North Lake. A grain elevator was constructed just before the railroad arrived, and North Lake became an
important shipping point for area farmers. Many of the area students road the train to the high school in
Menomonee Falls every day. The line was eventually taken over by the Milwaukee Road, and in 1972 it was sold
to a group of railroad buffs. They ran an excursion line between Merton and North Lake during the summer
months until 2002, when the business was shut down.
In 1910, the Chicago and North Western Railroad was extended through central Merton Township. North Lake
was the only village with a depot on the line. This railroad and the Superior line provided shipping outlets for
North Lake’s two largest industries in the early twentieth century; the huge gravel quarry just north of the village
and the ice harvest on North Lake itself. Much of the ice was used to refrigerate railroad cars.
The Merton Township has many beautiful lakes, and the hotels and cottages on them provided a summer haven
for the wealthy. Pine Lake even provided a steam launch to carry guests around the lake. Beaver Lake and North
Lake had large hotels and resorts such as Interlachen Resort and Idlehaven. The early development on the lakes
was rather exclusively wealthy, but some of the early resorts served a clientele of more modes means. Many
Milwaukeans rented cottages for a weekend and returned to Milwaukee to work. It was said that on Sunday night,
the train had standing room only all the way from Okauchee to Milwaukee. The conductor couldn’t cover the
whole train before the trip was over.
The growing popularity of the automobile opened up the lake region to non-exclusive residential development,
and in the 1920’s, the shores of North Lake, Keesus, Moose Lake and Okauchee Lake began to fill in with small
cottages. The wealthier lake communities viewed this trend with alarm. They objected to what they considered
the “exploitation” of the lake region and took steps to prevent it from happening on their lakes. Pine Lake
residents put restrictions on the deeds to the lands saying “No public boat or aeroplane landing or livery, dance
hall, or place of public amusement of any kind shall be permitted on said land, and not more than one house per
acre or per 150’ of lake frontage.” Since 1928 the Village of Chenequa has had no problem with growth. The
other lakes were seeing an opposite trend with cottages springing up on every 50’ lot. Those cottages have since
been replaced by large, imposing year round homes, a trend that began after World War II. In 1970, 20% of the
area’s housing was still seasonal. Today it is less than 1%.
Subdivision growth was strong in the 1960’s, but in the 1990’s it exploded. When the farmers realized that their
children wanted to go to college and get off the farms, they sold the properties to developers, who in turn built
subdivisions. At one time farming was a way of life in the Merton Township, but today there are only a handful
of working farms left, and many of those are operated by last generation farmers.
The unincorporated Villages of Monches, North Lake and Stone Bank are clannish, dominated by a few old-line
family names, and made up of blue collar workers, historically resistant to change. The core of the villages is the
church, and the social gathering place is the local tavern. These small villages were laid out in small lots, usually
66’ x 165’, with residences and businesses mixed throughout, leaving little room for growth. The growth has
taken place all around the villages in the subdivisions, but due to the closing of some outlying schools and
expansion of others, the people still form a community. The churches also tend to bring people together, as do the
festivals and summer events in the area.
Town of Merton
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In conclusion, Merton Township is a collection of distinctly different communities, each independent,
each with strong interests. Although the “newcomers” constitute a majority of the area’s population, the
long-established communities have remained cohesive, and all of the groups co-exist in what
approximates an equilibrium. Development is likely to continue, and whether or not the Township will
be able to retain its heterogeneity in the face of continued change remains to be seen.
PLANNING BENEFITS
Comprehensive development planning has many benefits. A formal planning process provides a community with
an opportunity to focus on the future and establish community goals, objectives, and policies regarding future use,
physical development and conservation of land. With clear goals, local government officials often make decisions
that are in the best interest of citizens or the future of the community. Finally, comprehensive planning allows for
continuity throughout a community by determining where a community is at the present, how did the community
get to this point, where does the community want to go, and how will it get there.
Coordinated comprehensive planning among municipalities provides several benefits, including:
1. All units of government benefit from the updated demographic and growth information and how it relates
to economic forecasting and development trends.
2. It is cost-effective to coordinate. Coordinated planning reduces the need for each municipality to
complete all of the elements of a comprehensive land use plan.
3. Participating entities all have active roles in the planning process.
4. A coordinated planning process offers greater opportunity for public input.
5. A coordinated planning process makes efficient use of professional planning resources currently
available.
6. Coordinated planning allows for the creation of a plan amendment process that considers all possible
impacts, including effect on the adjoining municipality.
7. Comprehensive planning provides an opportunity to evaluate all aspects of future use and development,
thus providing local officials with the essential information to make informed decisions.
8. A coordinated effort provides an opportunity to continue building inter-municipal cooperation on land use
issues.
COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING LAW
In 1999, the Wisconsin Legislature enacted a comprehensive planning law which is set forth in Section 66.1001 of
the Wisconsin Statutes. The comprehensive planning law requires that comprehensive plans be completed and
adopted by local governing bodies by January 1, 2010 in order for a county, city, village, or town to enforce its
zoning, subdivision, or official mapping ordinances. According to this law, a comprehensive plan means:
1. For a county, a development plan that is prepared or amended under s.59.69 (2) or (3).
2. For a city or a village, or for a town that exercises village powers under s. 60.22 (3), or a master plan that
is adopted or amended under s. 62.23 (2) or (3).
3. For a regional planning commission, a master plan that is adopted or amended under s. 66.0309 (8), (9),
or (10).
The law also requires that all comprehensive plans address the following nine elements:
1. Issues and Opportunities
2. Housing
3. Transportation
Town of Merton
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Utilities and Community Facilities
Agricultural, Natural, and Cultural Resources
Economic Development
Intergovernmental Cooperation
Land Use
Implementation
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN PURPOSE
The Town of Merton Comprehensive Plan is intended to guide the short-range and long-range growth and
development of the Town over the next 25 years. The plan sets forth a vision of what the community wishes to
become. It identifies areas to be developed and/or preserved, recommends types of uses for specific areas of the
Town, identifies needed transportation and community facilities needed to serve future land uses and provides
strategies to implement the plan. Ultimately, the plan will be used by the community in making decisions relating
to the use of land.
The comprehensive plan is prepared in conjunction with the “Development Plan for Waukesha County”. The
Town of Merton is part of an intergovernmental cooperation effort led by Waukesha County. The Town has been
an active member of the Waukesha County Advisory Committee and is working in coordination with Waukesha
County to prepare a comprehensive plan under the State of Wisconsin’s “Smart Growth” Planning Law as
outlined in Chapter 66.1001 Wisconsin State Statutes. The comprehensive planning law requires local units of
government complete and adopt a comprehensive plan by January 1, 2010.
PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT
Wisconsin’s Comprehensive Planning law requires public participation in every stage of the development of a
plan. Specifically, Wisconsin Statutes, Section 66.1001(4) (a) requires that:
“ The governing body of a local government unit shall adopt written procedures that are designed to foster public
participation, including open discussion, communication programs, information services, and public meetings for
which advance notice has been provided, in every stage of the preparation of a comprehensive plan. The written
procedures shall provide for a wide distribution of proposed, alternative, or amended elements of a comprehensive
plan and shall provide an opportunity for written comments on the plan to be submitted by members of the public
to the governing body and for the governing body to respond to such written comments. The written procedures
shall describe the methods the governing body of a local governmental unit will use to distribute proposed,
alternative, or amended elements of a comprehensive plan to owners of property, or to persons who have a
leasehold interest in property pursuant to which the persons may extract nonmetallic mineral resources in or on
property, in which the allowable use or intensity of use of the property is changed by the comprehensive plan.”
As required by the statutes a public participation plan was adopted by the Waukesha County Board of Supervisors
on April 12, 2005, based on a recommended plan prepared by the Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee. A
public participation plan was also adopted by the governing body of each of the cities, villages, and towns
participating in the planning process.
Waukesha County and the local municipalities understood that public participation is very important in the
planning process. The biggest challenge in this process was making citizens understand that this process
collectively benefits all communities in Waukesha County as well as setting the stage for the physical
development of their community.
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In the early stages of the planning process it was important to enhance public awareness. News articles, websites,
and public meetings were effective in creating public awareness. Citizen representation on the planning element
subcommittees was also used to implement this public awareness campaign.
Education is the central focus of any public participation effort. The citizens need a better understanding of the
current and past growth and change trends that occurred in Waukesha County. News releases, fact sheets,
newsletters, comprehensive planning website, and display exhibits at libraries, local government offices, and
regional events are valuable tools in educating the public. The public participation function was the responsibility
of the Comprehensive Development Plan Advisory Committee.
Giving citizens the opportunity to help identify key community issues and develop a vision of what Waukesha
County and the local communities should look like in the Year 2035 was an intensive effort. The most effective
way to get this done was through a public opinion survey. Citizens also made comments through a planning web
site.
The final step that required extensive public input was the draft plan review and plan adoption process. In this
step, local units of government and citizens reviewed the plan. Public education provided information to help
citizens understand the review process and describe plan specifics. Public input was solicited through open
houses and public hearings. The web site also allowed citizens the opportunity to comment. The draft plan was
available for review at local government offices and on the planning website.
In summary, the public participation steps for the comprehensive development planning process included:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Education on current and past growth and change trends in Waukesha County.
Utilizing visioning and public opinion information in developing plan goals and objectives.
Citizen and local government review of the draft comprehensive plan.
Various meeting of the Town of Merton Plan Work Group
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