Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Jansen Jansen, NE

Jansen is an incorporated village in Jefferson County in southeastern Nebraska, lying along U.S. Highway 136.

The Jansen area was settled in 1874 and 1875 by Mennonites led by Cornelius and Peter Jansen, immigrants from the Russian Empire whose ancestors were Dutch emigrants who had founded Mennonite colonies in Russia.

The Mennonite settlers purchased about 25,000 acres of Jefferson County land from the Burlington and Missouri Railroad at an average price of $3.70 per acre.

The settlers kept their Old World pattern of "line villages" — small hamlets named Rosenort, Rosenhof, Rosenfeld, Rosental, Neuanlage, Heuboden and Blumenort — and around 1900 one such settlement, "Russian Lane," reportedly had some 42 houses, churches and schools along a four-and-a-half-mile road.

The town of Jansen itself was platted in 1886 when the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad reached the area, and on October 1 of that year Peter Jansen deeded 80 acres for the townsite and began selling lots.

The village was named for Peter Jansen, a rancher and politician whose nearby ranch was noted for a large sheep-raising operation that fed up to 30,000 western sheep in its feedlots.

Peter Jansen was elected to the Nebraska Legislature in 1898 and again in 1910, donated land and funds for the Mennonite Deaconess Home and Hospital in Beatrice, and remained active in public affairs until his death in 1923.

Jansen reached its maximum population of 308 in 1910, when it was one of the leading villages in Jefferson County.

The 2020 census counted about 100 residents in Jansen, a sharp drop from its early twentieth-century size.

At the 2010 census Jansen had 118 people in 58 households and 31 families, and the median age in the village was 50 years.