Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in St. Louis, MO

St. Louis was founded on February 14, 1764, by Pierre Laclede and his young stepson Auguste Chouteau as a fur-trading post, and it was named for King Louis IX of France.

St. Louis is an independent city: it separated from St. Louis County in 1877 and has operated as its own county-equivalent ever since, belonging to no county at all.

St. Louis' nicknames are 'Gateway to the West,' for its role as the jumping-off point for westward expansion, and 'Mound City,' for the Native American mounds that once stood there.

St. Louis is watched over by the stainless-steel Gateway Arch, designed by Eero Saarinen and completed on October 28, 1965 - at 630 feet it is the tallest man-made monument in the United States and the tallest arch in the world.

St. Louis stands on the Mississippi River just below its confluence with the Missouri River, the meeting of the two longest rivers in North America.

St. Louis had 301,578 residents in the 2020 census and an estimated 278,144 in 2025, across about 144,891 households averaging just 1.92 people each, with about 45.3% of homes owner-occupied.

St. Louis' Forest Park covers 1,326 acres, roughly 500 acres more than New York's Central Park, and since opening in 1876 it has hosted both a world's fair and an Olympic Games.

In 1904 Forest Park hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the largest world's fair by area held up to that time, and at the same time St. Louis hosted the 1904 Summer Olympics, the first Olympic Games ever held in the United States.

Saint Louis University, founded in 1818, is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River.

Washington University in St. Louis, founded in 1853, lent its campus to the 1904 World's Fair, and its Francis Olympic Field hosted events of the 1904 Olympics.