Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Leland, MS

Leland is a city in Washington County in the Mississippi Delta, on the banks of Deer Creek.

The city had a population of 3,988 at the 2020 census, with 1,663 households, down from 4,481 in 2010 and a peak of 6,667 in 1980.

The area was first settled in 1834 by Samuel and Susan Jones, Mary Neely, and Malinda Breeland, and the town was later founded by Captain James Alexander Ventress Feltus, who bought 900 acres for $12,000 and laid out streets from First to Eighth Streets.

Leland was incorporated on February 20, 1886, after its citizens drafted a charter in January of that year, and it was named for Leland McCutcheon, the mother of a friend of Feltus.

Leland grew as a railway town and a center of cotton culture, and it was once considered the second-largest city in Washington County in 1920; cotton, soybeans, rice, and corn remain leading commodity crops around the city, along with catfish.

Mississippi State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture maintain an agricultural research station at Stoneville on Leland's outskirts.

Leland has five Mississippi Blues Trail markers, and Highway 61, celebrated in numerous blues recordings, runs through the town and gives its name to the community's blues museum.

The city is the burial place of folk artist and blues musician James "Son" Thomas, and blues musician Johnny Winter spent part of his childhood in Leland, where his grandfather and father operated a cotton business.

Leland is the childhood home of puppeteer Jim Henson, who was born in nearby Greenville but raised in Leland, where he created Kermit the Frog, and the city has a Jim Henson Exhibit museum along Deer Creek.

Leland was selected as the site of the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum, which opened in 2016.