Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Erwin, TN

Erwin is a town in East Tennessee and the county seat of Unicoi County, within the Johnson City metropolitan area and the Tri-Cities region.

The town took its name from a mail mishap: founded as the county seat in 1876, it was meant to be called Ervin for David J. N. Ervin, who donated 15 acres of land for the seat, but post office officials recorded the name as "Erwin" on December 5, 1879, and the mistake was never corrected; the town incorporated in 1903.

Erwin became a railroad town when the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway was completed through it in 1909 with its headquarters in Erwin; as the Clinchfield Railroad, its rail yard, diesel shop, and car repair facilities operated here until CSX closed them in October 2015, eliminating more than 300 jobs.

Erwin's Clinchfield Depot, built in 1925, is one of only three surviving stations on the original Clinchfield route and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

From 1916 to 1957, the Southern Potteries plant in Erwin produced Blue Ridge china, hand-painted dishware that became popular nationwide in the late 1930s and 1940s and remains prized by antique collectors.

In 1916, Erwin gained notoriety when Mary, a circus elephant that had killed her handler in nearby Kingsport, was hanged from a 100-ton railroad crane in the Erwin rail yard before a crowd of about 2,500 people.

Since 2015, the town has marked that history with a yearly elephant art auction, in which painted fiberglass elephants displayed around town are sold to benefit The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee.

The 2020 census counted 6,083 residents in Erwin.

Those residents formed 2,657 households and 1,632 families at the 2020 census.

Nuclear Fuel Services has operated a major facility in Erwin since 1957 that prepares enriched uranium for nuclear reactor fuel, including downblending high-enriched uranium into low-enriched form for commercial reactors.