Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Atchison Atchison, KS

Atchison is a city on the west bank of the Missouri River in northeastern Kansas and the county seat of Atchison County.

Atchison was founded in 1854 and named in honor of David Rice Atchison, a United States senator from Missouri.

The city grew up as a Missouri River port and outfitting point and became the original eastern terminus of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

Atchison is the birthplace of aviator Amelia Earhart, who was born on July 24, 1897, in her grandparents' home on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River.

The Earhart family home, built in 1861 by her grandfather Judge Alfred G. Otis, is now the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and maintained by the Ninety-Nines, the women pilots' organization of which Earhart was the first president.

Each July the city celebrates the Amelia Earhart Festival, and the bridge carrying traffic across the Missouri River at Atchison bears her name.

Benedictine monks arrived in Atchison in 1856 and opened St. Benedict's College in 1858 with just six students; it merged with Mount St. Scholastica College in 1971 to form today's Benedictine College.

Benedictine College, a Catholic liberal arts college, enrolls about 2,250 undergraduates on its bluff-top campus beside St. Benedict's Abbey and the Mount St. Scholastica Monastery.

The Benedictine campus stands on land the Lewis and Clark expedition reached on July 4, 1804, as the explorers traveled up the Missouri River.

Local students also attend Maur Hill-Mount Academy, a Catholic prep school whose roots reach back to Atchison schools founded in 1863 and 1919.