Milligan College is unique in many ways, with its beautiful campus and rich history, but it has one unique feature that really sets it apart from other colleges of similar size: Milligan has its own ZIP code.
It isn’t unheard of for large universities to have their own postal code designations; the University of Texas in Austin has its own ZIP code specifically for its campus. But that school has over 50,000 students, whereas Milligan only has 1,200 students. So why would the United States Postal Service give such a small population its own ZIP code, especially when Elizabethton and Johnson City are so close by? To learn the truth, we have to look at the history of Milligan College.
Josephus Hopwood founded the Buffalo Male and Female Institute in 1866, creating the campus that would later become Milligan College. The same year, the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad was was chartered by Tennessee’s state legislature to run from Johnson City to Hampton, Tenn. The rails passed close by the newly founded Buffalo Institute, so the residents of the school convinced the railroad company to create a stop at the school to help transport mail and persons coming to and from the school. With the founding of this stop along the railroad, the Buffalo Institute now had a much easier way of receiving its mail and thus created an official campus post office to help distribute the mail coming to or leaving campus.
As the Buffalo Institute expanded, it retained the railroad stop and post office, with the ET&WNC continuing to deliver mail to the campus as late as 1950. Today, Milligan College still retains its own post office, but mail is delivered via the United States Postal Service, not through the railroad. The ET&WNC is no longer in use as a railroad but has received a new life as the Tweetsie Trail, a walking and biking trail that was completed in 2014.
That explains the presence of Milligan’s post office but still doesn’t answer why it has a unique ZIP code.
The ZIP code system, which stands for Zoning Improvement Plan, was introduced by the United States Postal Service in 1963 as a way to help better organize mail delivery across the expansive United States. The first three digits of the ZIP code denote which Sectional Center Facility that specific piece of mail should be sent to. At these SCFs, mail is processed and sorted by the final two numbers in the ZIP code, which denote a specific mail office within that SCF’s jurisdiction. From there, mail is sent to specific post offices based on the final two numbers of the ZIP code, where it is then delivered to specific addresses or P.O. boxes. The SCF that serves Milligan College is located in Johnson City, and its numerical code is 376. The post office at Milligan was given its own designation when ZIP codes were made mandatory, giving Milligan College it’s own unique ZIP code of 37682.
Milligan College has always been closely entwined with the history of the area it resides in, and the story of Milligan’s ZIP code is no different. From a simple stop on a grand railroad to the brick building that greets everyone at the gates of campus today, Milligan has maintained an independent postal service from its earliest days as an institution, and that is why Milligan students can call 37682 their own.