Brown Deer is a village in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, United States.

In the 1800s, the town was a predominantly agricultural community, and many residents were of German and Irish extraction.

[6] The Village of Brown Deer has its origins in a rural hamlet that formed at a crossroads in the northeastern quadrant of the Town of Granville in the 1870s.

Some residents in the Brown Deer area did not want their community to become part of Milwaukee and organized to incorporate as a village in 1953 in order to stave off annexation.

When the Village of Brown Deer incorporated on January 20, 1955, it had an area of 1.8 square miles.

In 1956, the city and the village both attempted to annex all of the Town of Granville's remaining territory.

[7] Most of Granville's residents supported annexation by Milwaukee, but some favored Brown Deer's lower tax rates.

The courts reaffirmed their decision in 1962 when they ruled that Brown Deer's 1956 annexation ordinances were invalid, and awarded sixteen square miles of the former Town of Granville to the City of Milwaukee.

[10] According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 4.40 square miles (11.40 km2), all of it land.