Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Sanford, FL

Sanford is the county seat of Seminole County and has been ever since the county was created on April 25, 1913, when Sanford was carved out of Orange County as its seat.

Sanford sits on the southern shore of Lake Monroe at the head of navigation on the St. Johns River, and calls itself the Historic Waterfront Gateway City.

The city was founded by Henry Shelton Sanford, a former U.S. minister to Belgium who bought more than 12,000 acres west of the old trading post of Mellonville in 1870; Sanford was incorporated on September 29, 1877, and absorbed Mellonville six years later.

Henry Sanford promoted his city as the Gate City of South Florida, and for a time in the late 1800s Sanford was a more prominent and prosperous transportation hub than its southern neighbor, Orlando.

After the Great Freeze of 1894-95 wiped out the citrus industry, Sanford's farmers switched to celery - by the early 1900s the city was exporting about $8 million worth of celery a year and had earned its lasting nickname, the Celery City.

Sanford had a population of 61,051 at the 2020 census, up from 53,570 in 2010, and its brick-street historic downtown still holds more than 20 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sanford has about 24,875 households, and only about 52% of its homes are owner-occupied - a renter-heavy mix that is unusual among Central Florida suburbs.

Sanford is home to Seminole State College of Florida, one of the largest state colleges in the region.

Sanford hosts the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens, one of the Orlando area's oldest attractions.

The Sanford RiverWalk runs nearly five miles along Lake Monroe and connects the downtown waterfront to Florida's Coast to Coast Trail.