Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Kinloch, MO

Kinloch is a city in St. Louis County, Missouri, and it is the oldest African-American community to be incorporated in Missouri.

Kinloch grew up around Kinloch Park, a commuter suburb first developed in the 1890s on land that had been sold to Black families through white intermediaries because direct sales to Black buyers were barred.

Kinloch was incorporated in 1948, becoming Missouri's first incorporated Black city.

The Kinloch Airfield hosted the first international air meet in October 1910, where Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane, riding with pilot Arch Hoxsey in a Wright Brothers plane.

Kinloch's airfield racked up early aviation firsts, including the first control tower, the first meal served on a flight, the first airmail shipment and the first parachute jump.

Albert Bond Lambert bought the Kinloch airfield in 1925 and sold it to the City of St. Louis at cost in 1928, making it the first city-operated airport in the United States and the direct precursor of today's St. Louis Lambert International Airport.

In 1924, Kinloch became the first community in Missouri to elect a Black man, the Reverend Walter Johnson, to its school board.

Holy Angels Parish, established in Kinloch in 1931, remained open until 2002, making it the oldest continuing Black parish in the St. Louis Archdiocese.

Kinloch's population peaked at 6,501 residents in the 1960 census, when it was a thriving, self-contained Black community with its own schools, churches and businesses.

Starting in the 1980s, the City of St. Louis bought up most of Kinloch's homes for an FAA noise-abatement program for the nearby airport, and between 1990 and 2000 the city lost more than 80 percent of its population.