Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Falls City, NE

Falls City is a city in and the county seat of Richardson County, in the far southeastern corner of Nebraska on the north bank of the Big Nemaha River.

The city takes its name from the Falls of Nemaha, a four-foot rock ledge over which the Big Nemaha River once poured; river changes have mostly erased the falls, though a small remnant ledge still shows in the old river bend during dry seasons.

Falls City was founded in the summer of 1857 by abolitionists James Lane, John Burbank, J. E. Burbank and Isaac L. Hamby, and it served as a station on the Underground Railroad along the Lane Trail into Kansas.

Falls City became the permanent county seat only in 1860, after three elections against the rival town of Salem.

The arrival of the Atchison & Nebraska Railroad in 1871 and the Missouri Pacific in 1882 — which made Falls City a division point in 1909 — fueled growth to a peak population of 6,203 in 1950.

The 2020 census counted 4,133 people in Falls City, living in 1,820 households.

On August 6, 1966, Braniff International Airways Flight 250 broke up in a thunderstorm and crashed near Falls City, killing all 42 people aboard in what remains one of Nebraska's worst aviation disasters.

Falls City has produced three governors of Nebraska: John H. Morehead, Arthur J. Weaver and Dave Heineman.

The 1993 murder of Brandon Teena, who had recently moved to Falls City, drew national attention to the failures that preceded it and was dramatized in the 1999 Academy Award-winning film Boys Don't Cry.

Falls City students attend Falls City Public Schools, with two elementary schools, a junior high and Falls City High School, or the K–12 Sacred Heart Catholic School.