Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Randolph, TN

Randolph is an unincorporated community in Tipton County, West Tennessee, which the U.S. Census Bureau delineates as a census-designated place (CDP).

The community stands on the Second Chickasaw Bluff above the east bank of the Mississippi River, near the mouth of the Hatchie River, on the southeastern edge of the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

Randolph was founded in the 1820s - the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture dates its official establishment to 1823 - and was named for John Randolph, the Virginia congressman.

In 1830 Randolph was the most important shipping point in Tennessee, and it shipped more cotton down the Mississippi River than Memphis did until 1840, sending out as many as 40,000 bales a year in the mid-1830s.

At its commercial peak around 1834, Randolph had roughly 1,000 residents, four hotels, and nearly fifty businesses, and was called the "great steamboat depot of West Tennessee."

Randolph's fortunes faded after the 1840s because of a faulty land-title lawsuit, an unfavorable mail route, failed railroad schemes, and an unsuccessful 1852 bid to take the county seat from Covington.

In 1861 Randolph became the site of Fort Wright, the first Confederate fort built in Tennessee and the state's first Confederate military training camp; Nathan Bedford Forrest trained there, and only the fort's powder magazine survives today.

A second earthwork, Fort Randolph, was built about a mile southwest of town in the fall of 1861, more than 100 feet above the river with a view of the Mississippi for miles in both directions.

Union forces burned Randolph twice - in September 1862, on General William T. Sherman's orders after guerrillas fired on a Union supply ship, and again in 1865 - and the town never regained its commercial importance.

Randolph Bluff Historic Park, dedicated in 2008, interprets the community's Civil War history and opens its bluff-top views of the Mississippi River to the public.