Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Dayton, TN

Dayton is a city in southeastern Tennessee and the county seat of Rhea County.

Settled about 1820 as Smith's Crossroads, the town was renamed Dayton in 1877 after Dayton, Ohio, was incorporated in 1903, and developed an early industry in pig iron manufacture.

In 1890 the Rhea County seat moved from the community of Washington to Dayton, and the Rhea County Courthouse raised at the center of town soon afterward is now a National Historic Landmark.

Dayton won worldwide fame in July 1925 as the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial," in which high school teacher John T. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in violation of Tennessee's Butler Act.

The trial pitted prosecutor William Jennings Bryan against defense attorney Clarence Darrow, was covered by H. L. Mencken for The Baltimore Sun, and ended with Scopes convicted and fined $100; Bryan died in Dayton on July 26, 1925, five days after the trial ended.

The second-floor courtroom where the trial was held is preserved in the courthouse, whose basement houses the Scopes Trial Museum, and each July the city stages a Scopes Trial play and festival reenacted from the original trial transcripts.

Bryan College, a four-year Christian liberal arts college founded in 1930 as a memorial to William Jennings Bryan, overlooks the city from a hill.

The 2020 census counted 7,065 residents in Dayton.

Dayton's residents formed 2,866 households and 1,510 families at the 2020 census.

Dayton is a small manufacturing center whose largest manufacturing employer is La-Z-Boy, and Finland-based Nokian Tyres began operating a tire plant in the city in 2019 that employs about 400 people.