Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Crawford, NE

Crawford is a city in Dawes County in Nebraska's Panhandle, set on the White River at about 3,680 feet above sea level, a few miles east of Fort Robinson.

The town began in 1886 as a railroad tent city when the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad reached Fort Robinson, and its original plat was filed on June 21, 1886, on William Annin's tree claim.

Crawford was named for Captain Emmet Crawford, a cavalry officer who had been stationed at Fort Robinson and was killed in Mexico in January 1886.

When Crawford incorporated as a village in August 1886, Fort Robinson soldiers supplied many of the petition signatures the young town needed to incorporate.

In its frontier years Crawford was a famously wild town of saloons and brothels serving the fort's soldiers, and Calamity Jane once brought ten dancing girls from Deadwood and set up a tent south of town.

A second railroad, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, reached Crawford in 1889; the town became a city in 1907 and by 1911 ranked seventh in business volume among Nebraska communities.

The Elite Theater, opened about 1910 in a converted saloon, was owned and operated by Georgianna Higgins, who is thought to have been the first woman theater owner in the United States.

Crawford's population peaked at 1,845 in the 1940 census, and the 2020 census counted 840 residents, down from 997 in 2010, when the city had 470 households.

Downtown landmarks include the Crawford Historical Museum in the Adams Block and the 1938-39 post office, whose lobby holds the 1940 mural The Crossing; both the post office and the Co-operative Block are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Recreation in Crawford centers on City Park and Peabody Hale Memorial Park along the White River, the Legend Buttes Golf Course, and nearby Fort Robinson State Park, and annual events include the Old West Trail PRCA Rodeo and the Peabody Hale Fiddle Contest.