Getting to Mequon: Milwaukee's North Shore, Explained

Mequon is a suburb on Milwaukee's North Shore, about 14 miles straight north of downtown Milwaukee in Ozaukee County, along the Lake Michigan side of the state. Getting here is straightforward: it is a short run up from the city on I-43, and once you arrive it is a drive-everywhere town organized around two main roads.

Where is Mequon?

Mequon sits on Milwaukee's North Shore, about 14 miles straight north of downtown Milwaukee in Ozaukee County, on the Lake Michigan side of the state. It is the southernmost city in Ozaukee County, which puts it right where the Milwaukee suburbs give way to the smaller towns further north.

The quick way to place it: if Milwaukee is the city, Mequon is one of the affluent, leafy suburbs strung north along the lake, past Bayside and Fox Point and River Hills. It is close enough to the city to be a commuter town and far enough to feel like its own quiet place, which is more or less the whole identity of the North Shore.

How far is Mequon from Milwaukee?

Mequon is about 14 miles straight-line north of downtown Milwaukee, reached mainly via I-43, which runs along the western edge of the town. For most of Mequon, the city is a short highway run south rather than a real journey.

That proximity is the practical reason Mequon exists the way it does. Plenty of residents work in Milwaukee and drive back north in the evening, which is where the town's own tagline about the commuters comes from. For a visitor, it means you can base yourself in quiet Mequon and still have the full city within easy reach to the south, or come up from Milwaukee for dinner or a trail without it being a production.

Getting there from the airport and nearby towns

From Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport (MKE), Mequon is roughly 20 miles north. Cedarburg is about 6 miles north of Mequon, Grafton about 8, with Germantown around 4 miles west and Menomonee Falls about 5 southwest.

The nearby-town distances are worth having if you are stringing a trip together. Thiensville is the small village right next door, essentially surrounded by Mequon, about 3 miles northeast of the center. Cedarburg, 6 miles north, is the obvious day trip and gets its own plan in the day trip north to Cedarburg and Grafton. All of these are straight-line distances rather than drive estimates, since the actual time depends on which corner of Mequon you start from, but they give you the shape of the map: Milwaukee and the airport to the south, the smaller Ozaukee towns to the north, and a ring of suburbs to the west.

Getting around Mequon

Mequon is a drive-everywhere suburb. The two main corridors are Mequon Road, running east to west, and Port Washington Road, running north to south, and most of the restaurants and shops sit along one or the other.

There is no getting around the car here. Mequon is spread out, and the distances between, say, a restaurant on one corridor and a trailhead on the other are real driving distances, not walks. The two exceptions are the pockets that were built to be walkable: the Mequon Public Market, where you park once and eat across a dozen vendors, and Foxtown, the old brewery district where the brewery, lounge, and butcher sit close together. Everywhere else, plan on driving between stops.

If you are arriving from out of town, the simplest approach is to come up I-43 from Milwaukee and exit onto one of the two main roads, then use those as your spine. I-43 runs along the western side of Mequon, so most arrivals come in from that edge and work east toward the lake. There is no downtown to get lost in and no congestion to speak of once you are off the highway, which makes Mequon one of the easier places to find your way around, provided you have accepted that you will be driving to do it. Once you have that expectation, the town is easy: the two main roads carry most of what you are looking for, and nothing in Mequon is far from one of them. For what to actually do once you are here, that is all in what there is to do in Mequon, and for where to eat along those corridors, Mequon's restaurants covers it.