Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Briarcliff Florence, AL

Florence is a city in and the county seat of Lauderdale County in Alabama's northwestern corner, set along the Tennessee River about 70 miles west of Huntsville.

The town was founded on March 12, 1818, by the Cypress Land Company and planned by young Italian engineer Ferdinand Sannoner, who was allowed to name it after Florence, the capital of his native Tuscany in Italy.

Florence was incorporated on January 7, 1826, and quickly became a commercial hub at the foot of the treacherous Muscle Shoals rapids on the Tennessee River, with the first steamboat arriving in 1821.

The 2020 census counted 40,184 residents in 17,516 households, making Florence the largest city of "The Shoals" — the Quad Cities area it forms with Muscle Shoals, Sheffield and Tuscumbia.

Florence is home to the University of North Alabama, the oldest public college in Alabama, whose roots run through LaGrange College (1830) and Florence Wesleyan University (1856) and whose Wesleyan Hall still stands on campus.

The university's Kilby Laboratory School is the only university-operated elementary school in Alabama.

Composer W. C. Handy, the "Father of the Blues," was born in Florence on November 16, 1873, in a log cabin built by his grandfather; the cabin is preserved as the W. C. Handy Home and Museum, and the city celebrates him with the annual W. C. Handy Music Festival.

Florence contains the Rosenbaum House, the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Alabama.

The Florence Indian Mound, built by Indigenous people between about 400 BCE and 100 BCE during the Woodland period, is the largest surviving earthen mound in the Tennessee Valley and is interpreted by a museum on the site.

Known as "Alabama's Renaissance City," Florence also hosts the Alabama Renaissance Faire each fall.