24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Oxford, MS

Oxford is a city in and the county seat of Lafayette County, Mississippi, about 75 miles southeast of Memphis, Tennessee.

The city had a population of 25,416 at the 2020 census, with 11,856 households, making it the 14th most populous city in Mississippi.

Oxford was founded in 1837 by three pioneers, John Martin, John Chisom, and John Craig, who purchased land from Hoka, a Chickasaw landowner, and named the town for Oxford, England, intending to promote it as a center of learning.

Oxford and Lafayette County were formed from lands ceded by the Chickasaw people in the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek in 1832.

In 1841 the Mississippi legislature selected Oxford as the site of the state's first university, the University of Mississippi, known as Ole Miss, which opened in 1848.

The University of Mississippi campus, west of downtown, is an unincorporated area named University, Mississippi, fully surrounded by the city of Oxford.

Oxford is the hometown of Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner, whose home, Rowan Oak, is a landmark in the city, and the town inspired his fictional Jefferson in Yoknapatawpha County.

During the Civil War, Union troops under Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman occupied Oxford in 1862, and in 1864 Major General Andrew Jackson Smith burned the buildings in the town square, including the county courthouse.

Oxford drew national attention in the Ole Miss riot of 1962, when James Meredith, an African American, enrolled at the University of Mississippi under armed guard after state officials tried to block his admission.

The first presidential debate of 2008 was held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, drawing more than 3,000 journalists to the city.