Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Epes, AL

Epes is an incorporated town in Sumter County, Alabama, located on Jones Bluff overlooking the Tombigbee River in the state's Black Belt region.

Epes traces its origins to Fort Tombecbe, a stockade fort built by the French in 1736-1737 under Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville on an 80-foot limestone bluff above the river.

Fort Tombecbe was a major French trading post among the Choctaw; it passed to Britain in 1763 and was renamed Fort York, and Spain later rebuilt the site as Fort Confederación before ceding it to the United States under the Treaty of San Lorenzo.

The Fort Tombecbe site, just north of present-day Epes, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is owned by the University of West Alabama and the Archaeological Conservancy, and has been excavated by archaeologists since the 1980s.

The Tombigbee River near Epes is known for its white cliffs, exposures of the Selma Chalk Formation along the town's eastern limit.

The town began as Epes Station and was incorporated as Epes in 1899, named for Dr. John W. Epes, who donated the railroad right-of-way on the condition that the town bear his name.

In its prime Epes was a transportation and business center with three cotton gins, a cotton compress, a cottonseed oil mill, a creamery, and hotels, and the second stockyard in Alabama opened there in 1936.

The 2020 census counted 272 people in Epes, up from 192 in 2010; the town's population peaked at 722 in the 1920 census, and about 94 percent of residents in 2020 were Black or African American.

Epes has a humid subtropical climate, with hot, humid summers and mild winters.

U.S. Route 11 crosses the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway at Epes, and the town's ZIP code is 35460.