Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Anniston, AL

Anniston is a city in Calhoun County in northeastern Alabama and serves as the county seat, with a population of 21,564 at the 2020 census.

Anniston was nicknamed 'The Model City' by Atlanta newspaperman Henry W. Grady for its careful planning in the late nineteenth century, and it sits on the slope of Blue Mountain at the southern end of the Blue Ridge.

The city was founded in 1872 by Samuel Noble and Union general Daniel Tyler as a company town for the Woodstock Iron Company, and its name combines 'Annie,' for Tyler's daughter-in-law Annie Scott Tyler, with '-ton.'

Anniston was a closed company town for its first decade and was opened to the public and incorporated in 1883.

In 1882 Anniston became the first city in Alabama to be lit by electricity.

The Noble Institute, a school for girls, was established in Anniston in 1886, and the city grew into a center for iron, steel and clay pipe manufacturing that made it Alabama's fifth-largest city by 1941.

The 2020 census counted 21,564 people in 9,221 households in Anniston, a decline from its industrial-era peak as factories and its military post contracted.

The U.S. Army established Fort McClellan at Anniston in 1917, and most of the post was annexed into the city before the Army closed it in 1999; part of the former fort is now the Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge, protecting endangered southern longleaf pines.

The Anniston Army Depot, opened during World War II, remains a major Army weapons storage and maintenance site on the other side of town.

On Mother's Day, May 14, 1961, a mob attacked and firebombed a Greyhound bus carrying Freedom Riders just outside Anniston, an event now commemorated at the Freedom Riders National Monument, designated by President Barack Obama in January 2017.