Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Townsend, MT

Townsend is an incorporated city and the county seat of Broadwater County in west-central Montana.

Townsend began in 1883 as a Northern Pacific railway station serving nearby gold-mining districts, and railroad officials named it in honor of Susan Townsend, wife of Charles Barstow Wright, president of the Northern Pacific from 1875 to 1879.

The 2020 census counted 1,787 residents in Townsend, with 825 households and 901 housing units.

Townsend bills itself as the 'First City on the Missouri River,' sitting near the southern tip of Canyon Ferry Lake, a Missouri River reservoir that is Montana's third-largest body of water.

Canyon Ferry Lake was created by the Bureau of Reclamation's Canyon Ferry Dam, completed in 1954, and draws boaters, anglers and campers to the Townsend area.

The city covers about 1.5 square miles at roughly 3,842 feet elevation in the Missouri River valley, about 35 miles southeast of Helena.

Lewis and Clark passed through the Townsend valley in 1805, but lasting settlement did not begin until homesteaders and Civil War veterans arrived in the late 1860s.

St. Joseph's Catholic Mission Church in Townsend, now a museum, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the oldest standing example of secular Roman Catholic church architecture in Montana.

The State Bank of Townsend, opened in 1899, still operates as a bank, and the Valley Masonic Lodge No. 21, opened north of town in 1875, was moved into Townsend in 1884.

U.S. Route 12 runs east to west and U.S. Route 287 runs north to south past Townsend, and Townsend Airport is a public-use airport about two miles east of town.