Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Sedan, KS

Sedan is the county seat and largest city in Chautauqua County in southeastern Kansas, near the Oklahoma border.

Sedan was founded in 1871 and named after the French city of Sedan, then in the headlines as the site of the 1870 Battle of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War; its first post office opened on April 5, 1871.

When Kansas split Howard County in two on June 1, 1875, Sedan became the seat of the brand-new Chautauqua County, and the town was incorporated as a city in 1876, building a two-story stone courthouse that same year.

The 2020 census counted exactly 1,000 people in Sedan living in 422 households — nearly a third of Chautauqua County's entire population of 3,379 — on just 0.81 square miles of land in the Chautauqua Hills.

Sedan was the birthplace of Emmett Kelly (born December 9, 1898), who became the world's most famous circus clown with his sad-faced hobo character 'Weary Willie.'

The Emmett Kelly Museum opened in Sedan in 1967 and moved in 1980 into the historic 1896 Sedan Opera House on Main Street, where it also houses the world's largest collection of commemorative Jim Beam bottles — some 1,500 of them.

Downtown Sedan is circled by what is touted as the world's longest yellow brick road, built from more than 10,000 individually engraved yellow bricks inscribed with names from every U.S. state, 28 foreign countries, celebrities and a section honoring veterans.

Sedan celebrates its Oz connection each May with the annual Yellow Brick Road Festival downtown.

All of Sedan's public school students attend classes on a single campus just north of downtown in the Chautauqua County USD 286 district, whose Sedan Junior/Senior High School teams are the Blue Devils.

Early Sedan grew up as a ranching and trading center on the Middle Caney River valley, and oil and cattle production long remained the mainstays of the surrounding county.