Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Epps, LA

Epps is a village in West Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana, one of the parish's four incorporated villages; the parish seat is Oak Grove.

Little is known of Epps' early days, but the settlement is thought to have begun in the 1850s as steamboat traffic carrying cotton and timber increased on Bayou Macon.

It is believed, though not confirmed, that Epps was named after Edwin Epps, the Avoyelles Parish cotton planter known as one of the enslavers of Solomon Northup, the abolitionist author of Twelve Years a Slave.

Epps was incorporated as a village in 1939, according to the Louisiana Municipal Association.

During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, Epps was affected less severely than other towns within the Mississippi embayment and served as a Red Cross relief camp.

As of the 2020 census, Epps had a population of 358, down sharply from 854 residents at the 2010 census; at the 2000 census the village had recorded 209 households and 156 families.

The village covers about 1.0 square mile, all of it land, at an elevation of about 102 feet.

About five miles northeast of Epps lies Poverty Point, the monumental earthwork complex of concentric ridges and mounds built by the Poverty Point culture more than 3,000 years ago, one of the largest and oldest Native American earthwork sites in North America.

Poverty Point was declared a National Historic Landmark on June 13, 1962, became a state historic site that opened to the public in 1976, was designated a U.S. National Monument by Congress in 1988, and has also been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Poverty Point Reservoir State Park, built around a 2,700-acre man-made lake offering fishing and boating, is located about five miles south of Epps in neighboring Richland Parish.