Oxford/Briggsville Loop

Germania Jaunt | Lake Puckaway | Mecan River | Muir Park
 Newton Township | Northwest Passage | Oxford Briggsville Loop

Oxford/Briggsville Loop offers 2 routes in 1

Of all the mapped out bike routes of Marquette County, perhaps the most versatile is the Oxford/Briggsville Loop that takes the rider along the southwest border of a land rich with history and scenic splendor.

Oxford/Briggsville Loop Map The 24 mile Oxford/Briggsville Loop bike route is shown on the map made by Kathy Kuss, www.kathykusscreative.com, for Marquette Now. They are available at most Marquette County businesses in the Marquette County Passport book. The route is easily broken up into two shorter routes and you can begin your trip in either of 2 towns, Oxford or Briggsville.  The entire route is just short of 24 miles with 16 of those in the northern Oxford section and about 8 in the southern Briggsville path.

Before beginning in either location, you’re likely to enjoy your ride more by getting a feel for the history of the land you are about to ride through.  As far back as 12,000 years ago, people hunted, fished, and lived here.  The land offered all the same attributes that we find so appealing today.  Rich with wildlife, diverse vegetation, numerous sources of water, both Native Americans and early European settlers were drawn here to live.

Prairie Dock Wild flowers abound along the roads and in the fields on the Oxford Loop bike route in Marquette County. Each season has its own character and you’ll see both wet and dry prairie plants. Late summer and early fall brings out a variety of blooms like this Prairie Dock. Early settlers would probably have used its long tap root to brew tea for medicinal purposes.

If you begin on the north end of the route, the town of Oxford offers many places to park and leave your car.  The school grounds just off Main Street on County Road A is a good place to begin your tour.  Before you head off south on A, though, you might want to go north on A just outside of town to the Oxford cemetery where the pioneers who settled the community are buried.  There’s the first registered woman sulky driver, a man who wrestled a bear and won, and some of the many area men who went off to fight in the Civil War.  Area businesses sell an Oxford History book that tell their stories.

Oxford Cemetery A little off the bike route, but worth the time, is the cemetery north on Cty Road A. Many early settlers are buried here. At a cemetery walk during the Oxford Sesquicentennial, a local resident told the story of immigrant pioneer John Schellkopf who wrestled a bear and won. An Oxford history book is for sale at local businesses.

Back to the marked route, and the road south on County A is an easy ride.  Flat, lush country side opens into fields of alfalfa, corn, beans, and land that lays fallow.  You’ll cross Neenah Creek twice.  This was a source of water power for settlers and a rich source of food for early people with water fowl and other creatures living in or on its banks.  

When you arrive at the junction of County Roads A and P, you can decide if you want to loop back to Oxford on County Road O for the 16 mile ride, or you can continue down A to Briggsville.  In any case, don’t miss the small loop made up of County Road A, County Road P, and Neenah Road.  Neenah Road to 3rd Avenue takes you past a ghost town.  There’s no town there now, but once there was a hotel, mill, school, wagon shop, and skimming station for milk.  It was Douglas Center where the hope of the railroad had people dreaming big.  A beautiful private home that still stands on Neenah Road was built of local brick and was meant to be a hotel. It never hosted many guests because the railroad was built farther east. 

Hunters still can find the rail bed that was built up for the proposed tracks that stopped in the middle of a marsh.  A log school used to sit along the north side of Neenah Road before it bends north, built in 1853 and a post office was established for Douglas Center in 1861.

If you proceed south on A to the Briggsville portion of the Oxford Loop, you’ll wind through beautiful countryside with little car traffic. 

You enter into Briggsville from the north. This is where you might also decide to begin your bike route and you’ll find places to leave your car near the Lake Mason public boat launch or along the street near the little park across from the boat launch.

This area was home to Native Americans for thousands of years and ceremonial and burial mounds used to exist along Neenah Creek.  Some were lost to farming and some were covered over by water when Lake Mason was formed with the damming of the creek.  People who live in the area still find Woodland Indian pottery sherds and stone points and tools when the land is disturbed.

Inside Grotto; Shrine Grotto; Philomena close up At St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Briggsville, you’ll see the grotto shrine dedicated to St. Philomena, a 13 year old saint who was martyred in 4th century Greece.

Once a sacred place for Native Americans, Briggsville now is home to a shrine to St. Philomena.  The stone shrine arches over a marble statue depicting the 13 year old virgin saint martyred in the 4th century in Greece.  Her bones and a vial of her blood were discovered in catacombs in Italy in 1802.  The Briggsville Shrine is listed on the official site of the sanctuary of St. Philomena in Italy.  The shrine is in front of St. Mary’s Catholic Church and you’ll pass it as you enter into Briggsville from the north on County Road A.

Continue past the shrine and into Briggsville platted in 1854 and named after Alexander Ellis Briggs who settled there in 1850.  The Pheasant Inn on the shore of Lake Mason was once a hotel for guests traveling by stage coach.  Inside is a fire place that has stone points from the earliest inhabitants imbedded in the grout.  It’s an excellent place to take a breather.  You can picture a wool carding mill as well as a sugar mill that once sat on the shores of the lake created by the dam that provided power to the businesses.  

Pheasant Inn You can sit on the porch of the Pheasant Inn and know that this location has served travelers as far back as 1850 as a trading post and this present building once has spittoons on the floor and served a pheasant dinner for $1.50.

Before you continue on the designated bike route, you may want to go north on Highway 23 just to the edge of town where you’ll see a cemetery to the west.  This has some of the earliest settlers of Marquette County and also is the last resting place of famed wildlife artist and environmentalist Owen Gromme who died in 1991.  Gromme’s work capturing the birds, animals, and landscape of Wisconsin as well as the people who make up this great place will forever tell the story of the land.  He teamed up with Aldo Leopold and crusaded to stop the wholesale slaughter of hawks, owls, herons and other birds as “vermin.”  Gromme wrote,   "There is no sound on earth that stirs the primitive in me like the indescribable rattle of the sand hill crane."

Gromme Gravestone Owen Gromme was a wildlife artist, environmentalist, and creator of spectacular dioramas at the Milwaukee Public Museum. He fought to end large scale hunts of hawks, herons, and other large birds seen at the time as vermin. He made his home near Briggsville and is buried in the cemetery there.

Back in town and after a stop in the pretty gazebo in the downtown, continue your tour taking County Road A south and turning east onto County Road X.  Turn north on 3rd Avenue for a pleasant ride with some hills with gradual inclines.  When you reach Neenah Road, turn right and drive through the Douglas Center area, now a ghost town, described above.

Hotel at Douglas Center Douglas Center once had a mill, a skimming station, wagon works, and more, but became a ghost town when the railroad routed its tracks to the east. This private home was once a hotel built in anticipation of the business the railroad would bring in.

If you started in Briggsville and are following only the southern loop, you’ll turn west on P and continue south when you get to A and back into Briggsville.
Otherwise, continue north on County Road O which stretches flat and strait back to County Road D  where you’ll turn west and head back into Oxford. 

The Oxford Loop bike route in Marquette County can begin in Oxford or Briggsville and can be a 24 mile ride or can be broken into your choice of 2 shorter routes.  Whichever you decide to take, you’ll be travelling through prairie, woodlands, and wetlands on routes once walked by Native Americans, trails where oxen were driven by early European settlers, and where today, small town, rural beauty still reigns.