McKinley Beach is open for swimming, and that is a recent thing. Milwaukee County Parks closed this pocket beach in August 2020 after four people drowned here in a single season, two thirds of every Lake Michigan drowning recorded in Wisconsin that year. It stayed shut through 2021, 2022 and 2023 while the county studied the problem and rebuilt the beach, and it reopened with a ribbon cutting on May 22, 2024. Milwaukee County Parks lists it as an open swimming beach for the 2026 season, with short interruptions: the county closed it July 6 through July 10, 2026 so a contractor could regrade the sand, and an August 2026 sewer overflow closed McKinley along with Bradford and South Shore for a few days before all three reopened on August 6.

The danger that closed it was structural, not bad luck. The beach was built in 1989 between two stone breakwaters that shelter it and Lincoln Memorial Drive from the open lake, and the design assumed about two and a half feet of water all the way out to the gap. Record high Lake Michigan levels and steady sand loss took that to 6.2 feet by 2020. Deep water let wave energy travel in through the breakwater gaps instead of breaking offshore, and the Government Pier wall to the south reflected waves back across the pocket. County landscape architects described the result as transverse waves, an S shape of crossing swells that set up strong currents between the breakwaters where the surface still looked calm. Swimmers who could stand comfortably one moment were over their heads and moving the next.

The fix was sand. Crews hauled in roughly 11,000 to 12,000 cubic yards, then graded and groomed it to bring the swimming area back to about two and a half feet out to the breakwater. The work ran about $1.1 million, some $300,000 over the original budget: $77,182 for the 2022 study, $98,976 for design and $917,584 for construction. Permits from the Wisconsin DNR, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers did not land until September 2023, after that swim season had ended, which is why the reopening slipped a year. Parks now runs bathymetric surveys at the start and end of each season to track sand washing back out.

There are no lifeguards. Milwaukee County staffs its pools and water parks first and has not put guards back on any beach. Multilingual signs warn about Great Lakes currents, ring buoys hang at the shore, and seasonal Beach Ambassadors walk the sand handing out water safety information. Do not swim out to or past the breakwaters, and do not swim alone. The Milwaukee Health Department samples the water Monday, Wednesday and Friday through the season and now gets E. coli results back in three or four hours instead of twenty two; McKinley crosses the EPA advisory threshold of 235 CFU often enough that it is worth checking Wisconsin Beach Health before you drive over.

Everything around the beach stays open regardless of the water. McKinley Marina sits immediately south with 655 rental slips, the only public marina in Milwaukee, in operation May 1 through October 31, and the Government Pier walk out to the light tower is one of the better skyline views in the city. The paved Oak Leaf Trail runs through McKinley Park along the lakefront. Restrooms and showers are in the pavilion, there is a food concession, and parking in the McKinley lots off 1750 North Lincoln Memorial Drive is free. Bradford Beach is a short walk north if McKinley is posted under an advisory.