Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in McAlester, OK

McAlester is the county seat of Pittsburg County in southeastern Oklahoma, at the crossing of U.S. Highways 69 and 270.

McAlester began in 1869 when James J. McAlester opened a store in a tent at a spot called 'Crossroads,' where the Texas Road was crossed by one of the California trails.

Knowing coal outcroppings existed in the area, J.J. McAlester married Rebecca Burney of a prominent Chickasaw family in 1872, gaining citizenship rights that let him acquire control of the valuable coal claims.

In 1875 McAlester and three partners leased the coal land to the Osage Coal and Mining Company, an event considered the beginning of Indian Territory's coal-mining industry.

McAlester became the capital of southeastern Oklahoma's coal industry, and by 1900 about 25 percent of its residents were foreign-born, many of them Italian immigrant miners.

A rival town, South McAlester, grew up around an 1889 railroad junction a mile and a half south and eventually outgrew the original town before the two were united under the McAlester name.

McAlester had a population of 18,170 at the 2020 census, down slightly from 18,383 in 2010.

McAlester is home to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, the state's maximum-security prison, nicknamed 'Big Mac.'

The McAlester Army Ammunition Plant near the city covers more than 45,000 acres and is one of the largest conventional ammunition plants in the world.

McAlester celebrates its Italian mining heritage with an annual Italian Festival held the weekend before Memorial Day, and a Miners Monument stands in Chadick Park honoring miners who died in the coal fields.