Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Galax, VA

Galax is an independent city in southwestern Virginia, wedged between Carroll County to the northeast and Grayson County to the southwest; the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Galax with Carroll County for statistical purposes.

The city is named for Galax urceolata, an evergreen groundcover plant found throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Galax town site was laid out on a wide expanse of meadowland bisected by Chestnut Creek, at an altitude of about 2,500 feet on a plateau; the first plat map is dated December 1903, and the Virginia General Assembly officially chartered the town in 1906.

The land under Galax traces back to an 800-acre land grant given to James Buchanan by the British Crown in 1756.

Galax was separated from Carroll and Grayson counties and became an independent city on December 6, 1953.

Galax had 6,720 residents in the 2020 census, down from 7,042 in 2010.

Census Bureau figures for 2020–2024 count 2,763 households in Galax, averaging 2.34 people per household.

By the 1960s Galax was a busy industrial town, home to six furniture factories, a mirror factory, at least four textile companies, a lumber company, a Coca-Cola bottling plant, and Carnation Milk and Clover Creamery operations.

Galax hosts the Old Fiddlers' Convention, founded in 1935 by Galax Moose Lodge #733 as a fundraiser and recognized as the world's oldest and largest fiddlers' convention.

The week-long convention fills the 28-acre Felts Park every August and swells the city's population to roughly four times its normal size; since 1935 it has been cancelled only twice, once during World War II and again in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.