Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in WaKeeney, KS

WaKeeney is a city in northwest Kansas and the county seat of Trego County, at the crossroads of Interstate 70 and U.S. Route 283.

WaKeeney's unusual name is a portmanteau of its founders' surnames — Chicago land speculators Albert Warren and James Keeney bought the site from the Kansas Pacific Railway in 1877, surveyed it in 1878, and planted a colony there in 1879.

The founders billed WaKeeney as 'The Queen City of the High Plains,' but crop failures emptied the colony almost as fast as it filled; by 1882, all that was left were five poorly patronized retail stores.

WaKeeney became the Trego County seat in June 1879 and was incorporated as a city in 1880.

The town's first newspaper, the WaKeeney World, was first issued on March 8, 1879 — before the city was even incorporated.

WaKeeney is famous across Kansas as the 'Christmas City of the High Plains': since 1950 it has staged an elaborate civic Christmas lighting display, now featuring more than 6,000 lights and a 35-foot tree in the center of town, lit each year from the Saturday after Thanksgiving through New Year's Day.

The 2020 census counted 1,799 people in WaKeeney, in 837 households — down from the city's peak of 2,808 residents in 1960.

Volga German immigrants later became a major settling group in the WaKeeney area.

The Trego County Courthouse, built of local hard stone in the Queen Anne style with a 100-foot cupola, appeared in several scenes of the 1974 film Paper Moon.

WaKeeney's first major building was its train depot, built in 1879 from Saline River and Big Creek limestone and inaugurated on July 4 of that year.