Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Overland, MO

Overland, in St. Louis County, grew out of an overnight stopping point on the King's Road to St. Charles, where westward travelers from St. Louis in the early 1820s camped at a spot that became known as "The Overland Park."

Daniel Boone built a single-room cabin in the Overland area, near the present-day site of Lake Sherwood and Wyland Elementary School.

Overland's first school, the one-room Buck School, was built in 1846, and the Ritenour School District — which still serves the city today — was organized in 1867.

The town was known as Overland Park until 1919, when its name was shortened to Overland to avoid postal confusion with Overland Park, Kansas.

Overland was not incorporated until 1939, when it became a fourth-class city; voters later upgraded it to a third-class city in the 1990s.

Overland had 15,955 residents at the 2020 census, down from a peak-era population of 24,819 in 1970 as the postwar suburban boom faded.

The city exploded after World War II, jumping from 2,934 people in 1940 to 11,566 in 1950 and 22,763 in 1960.

Overland packs its roughly 16,000 residents into just 4.38 square miles of inner-ring St. Louis suburb.

At the 2010 census Overland had 7,356 housing units for its 16,062 residents, a housing stock dominated by modest postwar single-family homes.

The city grew up along the old King's Road to St. Charles, the early route west out of St. Louis along which its first settlers stopped for the night.