Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Mount Vernon, TX

Mount Vernon is a town and the county seat of Franklin County in Northeast Texas, about 96 miles northeast of Dallas.

The area was first settled in the mid-1840s, and Joshua Foster Johnson, who arrived in 1845, is generally recognized as the first settler.

The town grew up around a post office established in 1848, and in 1849 Stephen and Rebecca Keith donated the land on which a formal town site was laid out.

Although locals called the town Mount Vernon much earlier, the name did not become official until September 1875 — the post office had previously gone by Keith and then Lone Star because other Texas towns already used the name.

When Franklin County was organized in 1875, Mount Vernon won the April 30, 1875 election for county seat by a large majority, and the seat has never been contested since.

Two old Native American trade routes — the Choctaw Trail and the Cherokee Trace — crossed the county, and the Bankhead Highway, an early transcontinental highway, followed the Choctaw Trail route and serves as Mount Vernon's Main Street.

The railroad arrived in 1887, turning Mount Vernon into Franklin County's main shipping point for cotton and produce.

Mount Vernon was incorporated in 1910, and by 1914 it had an electricity plant, a waterworks, an ice plant, a telephone system, and three banks.

The Franklin County Courthouse on the town square was built in 1912 in Classical Revival style from white limestone, topped by a chiming clock tower.

More than 50 homes built before World War I still stand in Mount Vernon, many marked with signs naming their original owners, and the downtown was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district in 2018.