Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Burney, CA

Burney is an unincorporated town and census-designated place in Shasta County, sitting on State Route 299 in the mountains of northeastern California.

Burney was named after Samuel Burney, a settler in the area in the 1850s who was found dead in the valley in 1857, so the valley came to be called 'the valley where Burney died' and finally just Burney.

Before American settlement, the land along Burney Creek was inhabited by the Atsugewi, a Pit River people who held several southern tributaries of the Pit River.

Burney had a population of 3,000 in the 2020 census, living in 1,271 households with an average household size of 2.36 people, and about 66% of its homes are owner-occupied.

The town sits at an elevation of 3,123 feet at the base of Burney Mountain, an extinct volcano whose peak rises to 7,863 feet.

Just outside town, McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park is home to Burney Falls, a 129-foot waterfall on Burney Creek that is fed by springs and flows at about 100 million gallons of water a day.

Burney is a well-known fly-fishing base, with wild brown trout and native rainbow trout in Burney Creek and many nearby rivers and streams.

Parts of the 1986 film Stand by Me were filmed near Burney, including the famous scene where the boys outrun a locomotive across a trestle, shot at Lake Britton on the McCloud River Railroad.

Local students attend Burney Elementary and Burney Junior-Senior High School, home of the Raiders, part of the Fall River Joint Unified School District.

Burney has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate with snowy winters - it averages about 47 inches of snow a year and has recorded temperatures as low as -26 degrees Fahrenheit.