Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Fairfax, OK

Fairfax is a town in Osage County, inside the Osage Nation Reservation — which is coterminous with the county — along State Highway 18, about 28 miles southwest of Pawhuska.

Fairfax was created in 1903 when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway built up the Salt Creek valley and bypassed the Osage village of Gray Horse; local merchants moved their buildings from Gray Horse to the new townsite.

Merchant Lew A. Wismeyer rejected the railroad's proposed name 'Coda' for the depot and persuaded it to use Fairfax, after a hotel he had stayed at in Washington, D.C.

The Osage Nation retained title to the Fairfax townsite until March 3, 1905, when Congress provided for the land to be sold at public auction with the proceeds credited to the tribe.

Fairfax had 470 residents at Oklahoma statehood in 1907 and grew with ranching, farming and oil to a peak of 2,327 people in 1940.

Fairfax was the site of most of the Osage Indian murders of the 1920s — remembered locally as the 'Osage Reign of Terror' — in which at least 24 Osage citizens were murdered for their oil wealth in a plot masterminded by cattleman William Hale.

The murders are the subject of David Grann's bestselling book Killers of the Flower Moon and Martin Scorsese's 2023 film adaptation, parts of which were filmed in Fairfax and nearby Pawhuska.

Fairfax was the home of sisters Maria and Marjorie Tallchief, the celebrated Osage ballerinas; Maria Tallchief became America's first prima ballerina.

The historic Tall Chief Theater in downtown Fairfax was built by their father, Alex Tall Chief, in the 1920s to lift the town's spirits after the murders, and today bears the family name.

Fairfax has four properties on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Osage Bank of Fairfax, the First National Bank and Masonic Lodge, the Lincoln Colored School, and the grave and statue of Chief Ne-Kah-Wah-She-Tun-Kah in Fairfax Cemetery.