Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Fort Riley, KS

Fort Riley is a United States Army installation in north-central Kansas — not an incorporated city, but an active Army post whose housing areas form the Fort Riley census-designated place.

The Fort Riley Military Reservation covers 101,733 acres — about 159 square miles — across Geary and Riley counties between Junction City and Manhattan on the Kansas River.

The post was established in January 1853 as Camp Center, because surveyors believed the site near the junction of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers lay near the center of the United States.

On June 27, 1853, Camp Center was renamed Fort Riley in honor of Major General Bennet C. Riley, who had led the first military escort along the Santa Fe Trail in 1829.

Fort Riley was built to protect travelers and trade along the Oregon and Santa Fe trails, and the First Territorial Capitol of Kansas was built on the present-day post in 1855.

George Armstrong Custer arrived at Fort Riley in December 1866 to take command of the newly mustered 7th Cavalry Regiment.

The famed Buffalo Soldier regiments — the 9th and 10th Cavalry — were stationed at Fort Riley at several points in their history, and the post became home to the U.S. Army Cavalry School.

Fort Riley's Camp Funston is one of the places where the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic is believed to have ignited, after an Army cook named Albert Gitchell reported sick there in March 1918 and hundreds of soldiers fell ill within days.

Fort Riley is the home of the 1st Infantry Division, the "Big Red One" — the oldest continuously serving division in the U.S. Army — whose headquarters returned to the post from Germany in 2006.

According to the Army, Fort Riley serves a total population of more than 67,000 people, including roughly 15,400 active-duty soldiers, 19,600 family members and 6,100 civilian employees.