Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Norfolk, NE

Norfolk is a city in Madison County in northeastern Nebraska, set where the North Fork joins the Elkhorn River, and its 24,955 residents in the 2020 census made it the seventh-most populous city in Nebraska.

Norfolk was founded in 1866 by 124 German Lutheran settlers from Ixonia, Wisconsin, who set out in three wagon trains to claim inexpensive homestead farmland in the Elkhorn valley.

The colony's original name was a variant of 'North Fork,' but federal postal authorities transmuted it into 'Norfolk' — a name Nebraskans typically pronounce 'Norfork.'

Those first settlers established St. Paul's Lutheran Church, the first church organized in Madison County.

Despite being Madison County's largest city, Norfolk is not the county seat — the seat is the smaller city of Madison, and efforts to move it to Norfolk failed in 1875, again in 1915, and again in 1975.

Railroads reached Norfolk beginning in 1879, and by 1886 a population of 1,000 made it a Nebraska city of the second class; streetcars, a public water supply, and electric light all arrived in the late 1880s.

The 2020 census counted 24,955 people in 10,176 households in Norfolk, the principal city of the Norfolk Micropolitan Statistical Area and the major retail trade center for six counties of northeast Nebraska.

Norfolk was the childhood home of television host Johnny Carson, and the theater at Norfolk High School bears his name; before his death he donated millions of dollars to Norfolk institutions, including the Carson Regional Radiation Center at Faith Regional Health Services.

Norfolk is home to Northeast Community College, where a $1 million Carson donation brought long-distance learning technology to the campus Lifelong Learning Center.

The Elkhorn River flows through the southern part of Norfolk, and U.S. Routes 81 and 275 intersect in the city; the route of U.S. 81 through town follows the old Meridian Highway, once promoted as a direct north–south route across the United States.