Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Jefferson, TX

Jefferson is the county seat of Marion County in Northeast Texas, standing on Big Cypress Bayou near Caddo Lake at the junction of U.S. Highway 59 and State Highway 49.

Jefferson was founded around 1841 on land ceded by the Caddo Indians, laid out by Allen Urquhart and Daniel Alley, and named for President Thomas Jefferson.

The first steamboat to reach Jefferson, the Llama, arrived in late 1843 or early 1844.

Jefferson owed its boom to the Great Red River Raft, a natural log jam more than 100 miles long that dammed the Red River and raised the water in Caddo Lake and Big Cypress Bayou high enough for steamboats to reach the town from New Orleans.

By the late 1840s Jefferson was Texas's leading inland port and the commercial center of Northeast Texas, second only to Galveston in shipping tonnage.

Just after the Civil War, Jefferson was reported to have more than 30,000 residents, making it the sixth-largest town in Texas; in 1872 alone it logged 226 steamboat arrivals and shipped out more than 76,000 bales of cotton.

In 1873 Army engineers blasted the Red River Raft apart with nitroglycerin, the bayou's water level fell, steamboat traffic ended, and by 1885 Jefferson's population had dropped to about 3,500.

In 1873 David Boyle built the first ammonia-compression refrigeration plant in the United States in Jefferson.

The red-brick Marion County Courthouse in Jefferson was built in 1914.

Local legend holds that railroad magnate Jay Gould predicted grass would grow in Jefferson's streets after the town refused his railroad; Gould's private railcar is now displayed downtown as a tourist attraction.