Greenleaf, WI

Greenleaf is a Brown County village in the Town of Wrightstown, where WIS 32 and 57 meet WIS 96. The 2020 census counted 733 residents, and the community sits in the Green Bay metro with the Fox River Trail running through its center. Greenleaf began as Day's Mill after Charles West Day built a water-powered sawmill in the 1870s. Railroad tracks, a depot, and a water tank arrived as the Milwaukee and Northern Railway pushed north toward Green Bay. The community took the name Greenleaf for the railroad's general manager, Emery B. Greenleaf, and nearby Day Street keeps the earlier family name on the map.

Greenleaf's civic chapter is new enough to feel current. Voters approved village incorporation in 2023, the certificate arrived in April 2024, and the first village board was elected that May. The volunteer fire department dates to 1903 and still serves Greenleaf and nearby countryside. Wrightstown Community School District, the Fox River Trail, and the highway junction give the village three everyday connections: school, recreation, and the road between Green Bay and the Fox Valley. Greenleaf is a former mill stop that has grown into its own village while keeping its railroad street names and river-country setting.