Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Spencer, IA

Spencer is the county seat of Clay County in northwest Iowa, standing at the confluence of the Little Sioux and Ocheyedan rivers.

Spencer's town plat was filed on May 8, 1871 — its official founding — and the county seat moved to Spencer from Peterson that October.

Spencer was incorporated as a town on March 26, 1880, and re-incorporated as a city on March 21, 1892.

The 2020 census counted 11,325 people in Spencer, living in 5,066 households.

Spencer hosts the Clay County Fair every September; running since 1918 and averaging more than 300,000 visitors, it is billed as the World's Largest County Fair.

Spencer's public library cat, Dewey Readmore Books, became world famous and was immortalized after his 2006 death in librarian Vicki Myron's bestselling book Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World.

A 1931 fire in Spencer, ignited by a dropped sparkler, destroyed more than 100 buildings; the disaster led Iowa to ban almost all fireworks until a relaxed law passed in 2017.

On June 22, 2024, the Little Sioux and Ocheyedan rivers flooded much of Spencer, damaging more than 2,500 homes and businesses, at least 1,000 of them beyond repair.

Spencer's first schoolhouse opened in 1866 in the upper level of settler Romanzo Coates's cabin, where his wife taught as the town's first schoolteacher.

The settlement was first laid out as Spencer Grove, but the U.S. Postal Service required the shorter name Spencer in 1868 because another Spencer Grove already existed in Iowa.