Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Florida, MO

Florida is a village in Monroe County, Missouri, at the intersection of Missouri Route 107 and State Route U on the shores of Mark Twain Lake.

The village was laid out in the winter of 1831 and took its name from the state of Florida.

Florida stands near where the North, South and Middle forks of the Salt River once joined - water now backed up by Mark Twain Lake - in the central Missouri region known as Little Dixie.

Florida is famous as the birthplace of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, who was born there on November 30, 1835.

Twain joked that the village contained about a hundred people when he was born and that he 'increased the population by 1 per cent.'

Florida's population peaked at 280 residents in 1880 and was still about 200 in 1910.

The village nearly vanished over the twentieth century: the 2000 census counted 9 people in 4 households, the 2010 census recorded Florida as uninhabited, and the 2020 census counted 5 residents.

In 1960 the state of Missouri created the Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site in Florida, where Twain's two-room birthplace cabin is preserved inside a museum that also holds a handwritten manuscript of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and rare first editions of his books.

A red granite monument elsewhere in the village marks the original site of the Twain birth home, and Mark Twain State Park lies nearby.

The whole village of Florida covers only about a tenth of a square mile.