Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Clayton, IA

Clayton is a small city in Clayton County, Iowa, founded in 1849 and named after John M. Clayton, the U.S. Senator from Delaware who served as Secretary of State under President Zachary Taylor - the same man Clayton County is named for.

Clayton sits directly on the Mississippi River at the bottom of the bluffs and is only accessible via a steep road; many of its houses are summer homes for people drawn to the river.

Clayton grew into a busy steamboat stop and wheat shipping point, and its bluffside silica mines, opened in 1878, are still operating - farm produce from eastern Iowa is trucked in, stored in the old mines, and shipped downriver, so Clayton remains a working river port.

A fire in 1900 destroyed 23 buildings in Clayton, but the townspeople rebuilt right away and the city officially incorporated in 1901.

The 2020 census counted just 45 people living in Clayton, in 30 households, but there were 70 housing units in town - a sign of how many homes are seasonal.

Clayton's population peaked at 383 residents in the 1880 census, when it had four churches, a school, a bank, a railroad stop, a post office, and a saloon.

Passenger trains ran along the river through Clayton until the service was discontinued on June 8, 1951.

After a grain elevator was built by the river in the 1970s, Clayton's steep Main Street became infamous locally when seven trucks suffered brake failures in the elevator's first two years and ended up in the Mississippi River.

Clayton students attend the Clayton Ridge Community School District, which formed in 2005 from the merger of the Guttenberg and Garnavillo school districts.

Clayton is one of Iowa's oldest-feeling river towns, with a median resident age of 61.5 years in the 2020 census.