Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Strawn, TX

Strawn is a small city in southwestern Palo Pinto County, Texas, at the junction of State Highways 16 and 108 about 80 miles west of Fort Worth.

Strawn was one of several towns that sprang up around 1880 when the Texas and Pacific Railway began service; the site was earlier known as North Fork for its location on Palo Pinto Creek.

The town was laid out on the land of two early ranchers, Stephen Bethel Strawn and James N. Stuart — Stuart built the area's first house in 1875, and Strawn donated the railroad right-of-way and platted the townsite in 1880.

The first oil in Palo Pinto County was discovered near Strawn in 1895, but coal made the town boom first: the Mount Marian shaft was sunk in 1903, and the Strawn and Lyra mines together produced 1.6 million tons of coal between 1910 and 1920, most of it sold to the railroads.

Strawn's population peaked at 2,457 in the 1920 census during the coal and oil boom years, before the railroads' switch to diesel collapsed demand and the last Strawn mine closed in 1946.

By the time Strawn was counted as an incorporated city in the 1940 census it had 1,107 residents, and the 2020 census counted just 540 people living in 239 households, with a median age of 41.1 years.

Strawn has a humid subtropical climate, with hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters.

Football is the spine of Strawn: the Strawn High School Greyhounds play six-man football and won state championships in 2003 and 2008, then entered the 2019 season as two-time defending state champions chasing a three-peat under coach Dewaine Lee.

The Greyhounds' 2019 and 2020 seasons were chronicled in Texas 6, a documentary series on CBS All Access and Paramount+ that made tiny Strawn famous across the country.

Strawn's rivalry with Gordon, just eight miles away, dates to 1923 and has been ranked by Dave Campbell's Texas Football among the top 10 high school football rivalries in all of Texas, across every classification.