How did Briggsmore Avenue in Modesto get its name? Family histories offer clues
Have you ever driven down a road in Modesto and wondered, “Who decided it would be called this?”
Modesto Bee reader Dave Adams asked Bee Curious, a community-driven series in which reporters answer questions about Modesto: Where does Briggsmore Avenue get its name?
Briggsmore Avenue runs east of Highway 99 to Claus Road in central Modesto.
We searched The Bee’s archives to find the answer.
How did Modesto street get its name?
Adams isn’t the only one who has wondered where “Briggsmore” came from.
Nearly a decade ago, Elaine Ixcot of Modesto asked The Bee whether her relatives were the namesakes of Briggsmore Avenue.
“My uncle Russell and aunt Rose Briggs lived on the corner of what is now McHenry and Briggsmore avenues,” Ixcot said in 2014. “Uncle Russell was not only a farmer, but also an inventor. They had a big farm on the property, and I remember going down a dusty lane beside the canal to visit them.”
Ixcot said she had been told Briggsmore Avenue was named after her family.
Briggsmore Avenue named after local families
Then-Modesto Bee reporter Sue Nowicki researched the origin of the street’s name.
In 1864, the state granted the land to Charlotte and Oliver Cutts, and to Timothy Paige, according to maps shared with The Bee by Matt Machado, Stanislaus County’s public works director in 2014.
The property was purchased by one of Ixcot’s relatives 39 years later.
Janet Lancaster, a volunteer researcher for Modesto’s McHenry Museum, provided further clues for The Bee, citing a 1994 museum publication.
“In 1903, granddad (James R. Briggs, 1827-1906) purchased 133 acres of farmland as an investment for $25 an acre,” H. Russell Briggs wrote in the museum publication.” The parcel was located along the west side of McHenry, just north of an irrigation canal about 2 miles from Modesto. A road was later built along the drainage ditch.”
This is the road Ixcot remembers traveling down to visit her aunt and uncle.
Charles W. Whitmore and May Viola Whitmore lived near the Briggs family in the early 1900s, according to Lancaster and their granddaughter Margaret Whitmore-Bland of Modesto. Their son was Whitmore-Bland’s father, Chester Whitmore.
“My grandmother and grandfather had a ranch or farm down around the Briggsmore and Prescott area,” Whitmore-Bland said. “That’s where my father was born — on the kitchen table.”
“Eventually the names of the two adjacent ranching families there, Briggs and the Whitmores, were combined to name the road Briggsmore Ave.,” Briggs wrote in the museum publication.
“The two families just got together” and decided to name the road after themselves, Whitmore-Bland said.
“It’s part of my legacy,” she said, as is a local park.
Her grandmother donated land for what became Whitmore Park off Bowen Avenue in Modesto, she said.
“I can go over to the park and say, ‘That’s my family’s park,’ ” she said.
A 1955 county assessor’s map showed that the road between McHenry Avenue and Highway 99 bore the name Briggsmore Avenue by that time.
The street name was not on the 1955 map east of McHenry Avenue, as it exists now.
Former Modesto Bee reporter Sue Nowicki contributed to this story.
This story was originally published December 5, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Charles W. Whitmore and May Viola Whitmore owned 9,000 acres in Stanislaus County, much of it between Ceres and Hughson. That land belonged to Daniel Whitmore, who was not related to Charles and May Whitmore, their granddaughter Margaret Whitmore-Bland said. The error has been corrected.
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