Florence: Where Winter Quarters Became a Town
Near Omaha, Nebraska
The north Omaha neighborhood of Florence sits on ground that was once one of the largest refugee encampments in American history. In eighteen forty-six, nearly four thousand Latter-day Saint pioneers who had been driven out of Illinois crossed the Missouri River and established Winter Quarters here on the bluffs, building cabins, laying out streets, and constructing a grist mill. Brigham Young oversaw the settlement, which served as the staging ground for the great migration to the Salt Lake Valley.
When Winter Quarters was closed in eighteen forty-eight, the land reverted to the federal government and was eventually sold to a Council Bluffs real estate developer named James Mitchell, who platted the town of Florence in eighteen fifty-four. Florence briefly competed to become the territorial capital of Nebraska before losing out to Omaha. It thrived through the railroad era and was finally annexed by Omaha in nineteen seventeen.
A small Mormon Pioneer Cemetery on the bluff still marks where hundreds of the original winter encampment died.
