Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Meridian, TX

Meridian is the county seat of Bosque County and was created with the county itself in 1854, when commissioners chose a centrally located site on land donated by Dr. Josephus M. Steiner and Andrew Montgomery, surveyor George B. Erath laid out the townsite, and town lots were sold at auction on July 4, 1854.

Meridian's name traces to Meridian Creek and the Meridian Knobs, which George B. Erath had named in the late 1830s because they lay near the ninety-eighth meridian — and locals pronounce the town's name 'muh-REE-dee-uhn.'

Meridian's first courthouse was a one-story log cabin in the middle of town, and the current Bosque County Courthouse, a Victorian Gothic stone building completed in 1886, was reconstructed and restored from 2005 to 2007.

Meridian incorporated in 1874 and adopted a mayor-council form of government in 1888, the same era when the Santa Fe railroad's arrival in 1881 — with a depot about a mile and a half east of town — briefly threatened to shift the county seat to a rival railroad townsite.

Meridian is the gateway to Meridian State Park, a roughly 505-acre park about three miles southwest of town that was developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

Meridian had a population of 1,396 at the 2020 census, living in 531 households, and it lies on the North Bosque River about 47 miles northwest of Waco, where State Highways 6, 22, 144, and 174 meet.

Meridian students are served by the Meridian Independent School District and attend Meridian High School.

Meridian was an early base for Earle Bradford Mayfield, who practiced law in town before serving as a United States senator from Texas from 1923 to 1929.

Meridian has a humid subtropical climate of hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters, and its population has stayed remarkably steady — between about 1,300 and 1,500 in every census since 1980.