Biohazard Cleanup Near Maxville Arnold, MO

Arnold is a city in northeastern Jefferson County, Missouri, sitting near the confluence of the Meramec and Mississippi rivers as a suburb of St. Louis, and with 20,858 residents at the 2020 census it is the most populous community in Jefferson County.

Arnold's roughly 20,900 residents lived in 8,460 households at the 2020 census.

Arnold is a young city: it was only incorporated in 1972, when the older German farming settlements of Beck, Flamm City, Maxville, Old Town Arnold, Ten Brook, and Wickes joined together into a single city.

The city got its name in the 1920s, when businessman Ferd Lang Sr. bought land from a man named Louis Arnold, built a general store, tavern, and gas station on it, and named the spot Arnold in his honor; Lang's son, Ferd B. Lang Jr., became Arnold's first mayor in 1972.

The first European settler in what is now Arnold — and the first white settler in present-day Jefferson County — was John Hildebrand, a German immigrant who arrived in 1774 and built a fortified settlement near Saline Creek.

Much of the land under modern Arnold traces back to a 6,002.54-acre Spanish land-grant tract that Antoine Soulard and Auguste Chouteau bought at a courthouse foreclosure sale on January 5, 1824, for $14,929.92.

Arnold's Fox High School has hosted three presidential-era events: a 1988 campaign address by Dan Quayle, President Bill Clinton's 'flood summit' during the Great Flood of 1993, and President Barack Obama's town hall marking his 100th day in office on April 29, 2009.

In 2005 Arnold became the first city in Missouri to install red-light cameras, though its camera ordinance was later ruled unconstitutional by the Missouri Court of Appeals in 2013.

Arnold is repeatedly battered by the Meramec River: on December 31, 2015, the river crested at a record 47.26 feet, affecting more than 300 homes and closing Interstate 55, and it flooded again in 2017.

Arnold is home to Anheuser-Busch InBev's Metal Container Corporation plant, expanded in 2014 into the largest can manufacturing facility in the country, and to one of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's two St. Louis-area offices, employing at least 900 workers.