Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Ladonia, TX

Ladonia is a town in the southeastern corner of Fannin County, Texas, sixteen miles southeast of Bonham, where State Highways 34 and 50 meet.

The Ladonia area was settled around 1840 by James MacFarland and Daniel Davis, and the community was first called McCownville after Frank McCown, its first merchant.

According to local legend, McCown renamed the town Ladonia in 1857 to honor La Donna Millsay, a traveler on a wagon train from Tennessee who had entertained local residents with her singing.

Ladonia incorporated in 1885, when it already had about 350 residents, two cotton gins, a bank, a flour mill, a school, and several churches.

The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway arrived in 1887 — lured by a bonus offered by town officials — and made Ladonia a major agricultural shipping point for cotton, corn, oats, and wheat.

Ladonia boomed to roughly 2,000 residents and about 100 businesses by 1897, but it never fully recovered from the Great Depression and has slowly shrunk ever since.

By the mid-1970s Ladonia's major industry was the Texas-A-Pak plant, which shipped horse meat for sale in European markets.

The 2020 census counted 597 residents in Ladonia living in 304 households.

Ladonia is served by the Fannindel Independent School District.

Two miles north of town, the Ladonia Fossil Park on the North Sulphur River draws fossil hunters who dig up shark teeth and mosasaur vertebrae.