Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Sikeston, MO

Sikeston is a city in Scott County, Missouri, that also extends into northern New Madrid County, at the northern edge of the Missouri Bootheel.

Sikeston was platted in April 1860 by founder John Sikes, from whom the city takes its name, on the old Spanish King's Highway where it would meet the Cairo and Fulton Railroad.

The King's Highway through Sikeston was laid out by order of the King of Spain in 1789 to link St. Louis with New Orleans, and an El Camino Real historic marker still stands along it in the city.

Sikeston was the terminus of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad — one of the first rail lines west of the Mississippi River — until the line was extended in 1872.

The city sits atop the Sikeston Ridge, a raised strip of land running north to south that kept it above the swampy Bootheel bottomlands later drained by the Little River Drainage District.

The 2020 census counted 16,291 people in Sikeston, and the city has about 6,900 households.

Only about 60 percent of Sikeston's homes are owner-occupied, a lower share than in most Missouri cities, according to Census Bureau figures.

Downtown Sikeston includes Malone Park, the city's oldest park, and the six surviving columns of the 1879 First Methodist Church, which was destroyed by fire in 1968.

The Sikeston Jaycee Bootheel Rodeo, first held in 1953 and staged over four nights each August, ranks among the top 40 rodeos in the nation and has hosted entertainers from the Gunsmoke cast to Garth Brooks.

During World War II, Sikeston's airport was home to the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics, which trained pilots, and local school students helped raise money to buy three B-25 bombers, including the Spirit of Sikeston.