Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Erie, KS

Erie is a city in Neosho County, Kansas, and it is the county seat of Neosho County, even though Chanute is the county's largest city.

Erie sits in the valley of the Neosho River, about a mile northeast of the river, surrounded by the Osage Cuestas hills of southeast Kansas.

Erie was platted in 1866 as a compromise between two rival settlements — 'Old Erie,' later nicknamed 'Beantown USA,' and Crawfordsville — whose owners abandoned both towns to build a single new town together.

Four men — David Bray, Luther Puckett, John Himmelwright and Peter Walter — each donated 40 acres of his land to create Erie's original town plat, and the Erie Town Company was formed in November 1866.

Erie's first fire company was organized in November 1866, and its charter members were the same four men who had donated the townsite land.

Erie was incorporated on Christmas Day, December 25, 1869.

Erie became the Neosho County seat in 1872 after a contentious election against Osage Mission (now Saint Paul), and it kept the seat after the dispute went all the way to the Kansas Supreme Court.

By 1910 Erie was served by two railroad lines and had sawmills, flour mills, an oil refinery, a canning factory, two banks and two weekly newspapers, with a population of about 1,300.

The 2020 census counted 1,047 people in Erie; a decade earlier, the 2010 census found 1,150 residents in 463 households.

Erie covers about 1.21 square miles, all of it land.