Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Williamstown, KS

Williamstown is an unincorporated census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Jefferson County, Kansas, located south of the junction of U.S. Route 24 and U.S. Route 59.

Williamstown was founded in 1865 in the Kansas River valley near the Kansas Pacific Railway, on the banks of Stone House Creek, by local property owners Mapes, Williams & Moore.

The creek and townsite take their setting from early Kaw history — in 1825 the U.S. government built a stone house for Chief White Plume of the Kaw, and Kaw Half-Breed Tract No. 23 became the site of the Kaw Agency in 1827.

Samuel Mitchell opened Williamstown's first store in 1865, and the young town soon had a sawmill, a post office, a railroad depot, and a schoolhouse, though its growth was held back by the railroad town of Perry, founded three miles to the west.

On June 21, 1893, a violent tornado devastated Williamstown, cutting a track about a half-mile wide and six miles long, destroying everything in its path and killing at least 15 people.

Williamstown was inundated in the Kansas River flood of May 31, 1903, when water reportedly stretched from bluff to bluff across the valley, and it was hit again in the Great Flood of 1951.

The 2020 census counted 96 people in Williamstown, its first census count as a designated place.

Williamstown is served by the Perry-Lecompton USD 343 school district; the old Williamstown Elementary School closed in 2009, its building is now used by the Williamstown Assembly of God, and local children attend school in Perry and Lecompton.