Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Washburn, MO

Washburn is a city in southwest Barry County, Missouri, named for local pioneer Samuel C. Washburn, and today's town actually merges the sites of two older communities, Keetsville and O'Day.

The town's first settlement, Keetsville, was founded about 1840 by Georgia native John Cureton on the Washburn Prairie and was formally laid out in the 1850s by Englishman James T. Keet.

Keetsville stood along the historic Trail of Tears and the Old Wire Road, and it served as a flag stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route.

A Civil War skirmish in February 1862, a prelude to the Battle of Pea Ridge, destroyed the fledgling town, but it was rebuilt between 1867 and 1869 and renamed Washburn in 1868.

Washburn was officially incorporated on August 4, 1880, the same year the Atlantic and Pacific Railway arrived just west of town.

The railroad stop and the rival community that grew around it were named O'Day, after Irish-born railroad attorney John O'Day, and O'Day and Washburn coexisted until they consolidated in 1892.

By 1872 the young town already had 200 to 300 inhabitants with six general stores, three drug stores, and three hotels, and the O'Day Globe newspaper began publishing in 1887.

Passenger rail service ended in the 1950s and the old train station was razed in the 1960s, and today the Southwest R-V School District is Washburn's main employer.

The 2020 census counted 407 people in Washburn, down from 435 in 2010, when the city had 178 households.

Washburn covers 0.90 square miles along Missouri Route 90 just west of Route 37, about eight miles southwest of Cassville, the Barry County seat.