Briggs Nebraska

Former village · Douglas County · post office 1892–1913

About Briggs

Briggs was a railroad flag stop and post office north of Florence, along the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway near today's McKinley St. (NE 36) and Calhoun Rd. Almost nothing of the village remains. The map point is the GNIS location of the post office; historians place the village a little to the south.

History

Briggs was named for Ansel Briggs (1806–1881), the first governor of Iowa and later a Florence pioneer. It was a flag station on the "Omaha Road," not shown on the regular timetables. The post office opened in April 1892 and closed in 1913; in 1904 it was called perhaps the smallest post office in Nebraska, a 10-by-12-foot building that cost $100.

DuPont kept a powder magazine on the Grant L. Fox farm from about 1890 to 1949, and the Briggs Community United Brethren Church stood from 1923 to 1957. The depot was sold and moved in 1913 and still stands on Calhoun Rd. St. John Lutheran Church, 11120 Calhoun Rd., begun in 1900 for German settlers, remains. There is no marker.

Things to see

St. John Lutheran Church, 11120 Calhoun Rd. · the old depot on Calhoun Rd. · Florence and Winter Quarters, about 2.6 mi east-southeast · Neale Woods Nature Center and Hummel Park in the bluffs to the east