Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Byron, CA

Byron is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in eastern Contra Costa County, California, about 5.5 miles southeast of Brentwood, and it is not an incorporated city.

Byron's land was part of an 1835 Spanish land grant to José Noriega, who sold 17,000 acres to John Marsh for the equivalent of $500 — about three cents an acre — and in 1841 the Bidwell–Bartleson wagon train, carrying some of the earliest Anglo settlers from the East, arrived at Marsh's ranch.

Byron's first post office opened in 1878 and the town was named after an employee of the railroad; a historical marker in town notes that at the turn of the century Byron shipped more hay than any other station in California.

The 2020 census counted 1,140 people in Byron, down from 1,277 in 2010, living in 374 households, and about 50.5 percent of residents were Hispanic or Latino.

Just south of town stands Byron Hot Springs, a resort built around dozens of hot springs whose first hotel opened in 1889 and which drew movie stars and famous athletes in the early 1900s; the third hotel, a brick building completed in 1913–1914, still stands abandoned today.

After the resort closed in 1938, the government leased it during World War II and turned it into Camp Tracy, a secret military interrogation camp that held German and Japanese prisoners of war until 1945.

In 1942, all of Byron's residents of Japanese descent were forcibly removed by the U.S. government and sent to the Turlock assembly center during the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Byron Airport, two miles south of town, was dedicated on October 8, 1994, covers 1,307 acres — 814 of them reserved as habitat for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox — and is the home airport of the Patriots Jet Team.

Byron's children are served by the Byron Union School District and the Liberty Union High School District, and the district's only middle school, Excelsior Middle School, is located in Byron itself.