Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Wakefield, NE

Wakefield is a city in northeastern Nebraska that straddles the line between Dixon County and Wayne County, overlooking the Logan Creek valley.

Wakefield got its start in 1881 when the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway was built through the area, and it was incorporated in 1883.

The city was named for L. W. Wakefield, a railroad engineer involved in building the line.

Local settler Phil Graves deeded part of his land to the railroad for one dollar in 1880 so the line — and a depot, finished on January 1, 1882 — would come to Wakefield.

The 2020 census counted 1,522 people in Wakefield, and the 2010 census recorded 534 households in the city.

Wakefield's largest employer is the Michael Foods egg-processing plant at the north end of Main Street, which has employed around 800 people.

The plant began as a local creamery bought by Milton G. Waldbaum in 1950; the Waldbaum Company grew into an international egg business before being acquired by Michael Foods in 1988.

Jobs at the egg plant transformed Wakefield's population: a town that was 99.9 percent white in the 1990 census had become roughly half Latino by the 2020s, with workers arriving from Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and beyond.

Passenger trains stopped serving Wakefield around 1940, and the last freight train came through on March 15, 1977, ending nearly a century of rail service.

The Dixon County portion of Wakefield is part of the Sioux City, Iowa–Nebraska–South Dakota metropolitan area.