About Edison
Edison is a village in Furnas County, in south-west Nebraska. It covers about 0.37 square miles. The 2020 census counted 111 residents. The ZIP code is 68936 and the area code is 308. Arapahoe lies about six miles west, Oxford about seven miles east, and Beaver City about nine miles south. The village has no connection to the inventor Thomas Edison.
History
The first post office at Edison opened in 1880. The village was named for a son of R. H. Rohr, one of the owners of the first store. Rohr became postmaster and picked the name. Edison was incorporated as a village in 1907. The railroad ran through town, but Edison grew mainly as a stopping place for travellers and settlers rather than as a rail centre. Its largest recorded population, 334, came in 1910.
Landmarks
The village once had an opera house, two hotels, a blacksmith and a hardware store. The Farmers and Merchants Bank opened in 1926 and stayed open through the Depression. What was called the smallest schoolhouse in Nebraska stood south of town, 14 by 16 feet, built in 1896 as District 10. It closed in 1935 and was later moved into Edison to be restored.
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Edison traces to an 1880 post office and was incorporated as a village on January 3, 1907. It takes its name not from inventor Thomas Edison, but from "Eddie" Rohr, son of an early store owner, who became postmaster. At its peak around 1910 Edison had an opera house, two hotels, and three churches; the Christian Church, organized in 1889, still stands today.
A small Republican River valley community named for an early postmaster, not the inventor.