Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Crystal River, FL

Crystal River is a small city in Citrus County on Florida's Nature Coast, first incorporated as a town in 1903 and officially as a city on July 3, 1923.

The population of Crystal River was just 3,396 at the 2020 census, up from 3,108 in 2010 - in winter, the manatees visiting its waters can rival a sizable share of the human population.

Crystal River calls itself the 'Home of the Manatee', and it is the only place in North America where visitors can legally swim with wild manatees.

The Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1983, is the only national wildlife refuge in the United States created solely to protect the Florida manatee.

Manatees crowd into the city's springs each winter because the water flows at a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit - over 600 manatees migrate to Kings Bay, with hundreds gathering at Three Sisters Springs alone.

Kings Bay, the city's waterfront heart, is a first-magnitude spring system fed by more than 30 springs along the six-mile-long Crystal River, which connects the bay to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Crystal River Archaeological State Park, a National Historic Landmark on the city's northwest side, preserves burial and temple mounds built by Native Americans beginning around 500 BCE, making it one of the longest continuously occupied sites in Florida.

The 57-acre Three Sisters Springs property was once zoned for as many as 400 houses; conservation partners bought it in 2010 and it opened to the public in November 2014 as protected manatee habitat.

Jacques Cousteau helped rehabilitate Sewer Sam, the first documented rescued Florida manatee, at Three Sisters Springs in 1972.

Crystal River is part of the Homosassa Springs metropolitan area, and the Crystal River Preserve State Park protects thousands of acres of coastal marsh and islands nearby.