Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Wood River, IL

Wood River is a city in Madison County, Illinois, in the Metro East near St. Louis, with a population of 10,464 at the 2020 census.

Wood River played a famous role in American exploration: on December 12, 1803, the Lewis and Clark expedition arrived and built its winter quarters, Camp River Dubois, on the south bank of the Wood River, spending the winter of 1803-04 there before heading up the Missouri River.

The modern city exists because of oil: Standard Oil picked the site in 1906 and built a refinery that began operations in 1908 on what the WPA Guide to Illinois called an undeveloped 'sandy wasteland.'

Wood River first incorporated as a village in 1908, the same year the refinery opened, and it absorbed neighboring East Wood River and Benbow City as the refinery workforce grew.

Standard Oil bought more than two dozen Sears catalog kit houses in 1919 to house its Wood River refinery workers.

In 1926 Standard Oil spent $100,000 to build Wood River a community swimming pool that was the largest outdoor pool in the United States when it opened on July 4 of that year, drawing 15,000 people on its first day; the company also donated the Roundhouse community center.

Wood River sits along 'Refinery Row' in the American Bottoms, where Shell followed Standard Oil by building its own refinery just south in Roxana in 1918.

The Standard Oil plant later became an Amoco refinery and operated until 1981, while refining and pipeline operations remain part of the Wood River area economy today.

East Alton-Wood River High School, founded in 1919, calls its teams the Oilers, a mascot chosen because Standard Oil was the community's main employer.

The city takes its name from the Wood River, known to early French settlers as the Rivière du Bois, a small tributary that flows through town to the Mississippi River.