This week in Brookfield
About Brookfield
Brookfield sits just west of Milwaukee on land where the Potawatomi lived, and settlers began farming here in the late 1830s; Caroline Quiner, mother of author Laura Ingalls Wilder, was born in a cabin here in 1839. In 1843 Michael Dousman built a Greek Revival stagecoach inn for travelers on the plank road to Watertown, and in the 1850s the railroad made Brookfield Junction a small trading center for the farms around it. The farm town grew into a suburb after World War II and became a city in 1954. Today families swim at the beach in Fox Brook Park, tour the old stagecoach inn, which volunteers keep as a museum, and gather at City Hall each December for the German Holiday Market.