Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Hays, KS

Hays is the county seat of Ellis County and, with 21,116 people in the 2020 census, the most populous city in northwestern Kansas.

Hays was founded in 1867 as Hays City beside Fort Hays, and it was incorporated in 1885.

The city was named for Fort Hays, which the U.S. Army established in 1865 as Fort Fletcher and renamed in 1866 for Union Brigadier General Alexander Hays, who was killed in the Civil War.

Hays City was one of the wildest towns on the Kansas frontier: more than 30 homicides occurred in and around town between 1867 and 1873, and its Boot Hill cemetery held the bodies of some 79 outlaws and gunmen.

Wild Bill Hickok served a brief term as sheriff of Hays City in 1869, and other Old West figures who lived there in the era include Buffalo Bill Cody, Calamity Jane and General George Armstrong Custer.

Fort Hays State University, founded in 1902 as the Western Branch of the Kansas State Normal School, still stands partly on the old Fort Hays military reservation; it is the largest university in western Kansas, with a total enrollment of roughly 15,000 students.

The university's Sternberg Museum of Natural History displays extensive fossil collections from the Cretaceous inland sea that once covered Kansas, including an interactive diorama of prehistoric life in the region.

Southwest of Hays, the Fort Hays State Historic Site preserves four of the original fort buildings and a visitor center on the frontier post's grounds.

Ellis County was heavily settled by Volga German immigrants beginning in 1876, and as of 2010 more than half of Hays residents — 56.5% — claimed German ancestry.

Hays celebrates that heritage each fall with an Oktoberfest held at Frontier Park on the Friday before Fort Hays State's homecoming.