Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Lynchburg, VA

Lynchburg is an independent city in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains on the James River, founded in 1757 when 17-year-old John Lynch established a ferry service across the river.

Lynchburg was formally recognized by the Virginia General Assembly in 1786, incorporated as a town in 1805 and as a city in 1852, and it is nicknamed the 'City of Seven Hills' for the hills rising around its downtown.

The 2020 census counted 79,009 people in Lynchburg, and Census Bureau QuickFacts puts the city at about 28,701 households in 2020-2024.

The James River and Kanawha Canal reached Lynchburg in 1840, and the city grew into a major tobacco trading and manufacturing center with iron and steel industries by the 1850s.

During the Civil War Lynchburg served as a Confederate transportation hub and supply depot, and Union General David Hunter failed to capture it in June 1864, making it one of the few major Virginia cities never taken by Union forces before the war ended.

Liberty University, founded in Lynchburg in 1971, has grown into the largest employer in the Lynchburg region.

Lynchburg is unusually college-rich for its size, with Liberty University, the University of Lynchburg, Randolph College, Central Virginia Community College and Virginia University of Lynchburg all in the city.

The city's two public high schools are E. C. Glass High School, founded in 1871 and named for longtime superintendent Edward Christian Glass, whose teams are the Hilltoppers, and Heritage High School, founded in 1976, whose Pioneers are known as the 'Big Orange.'

Lynchburg's median age of about 28 years is strikingly young for a city its size, reflecting its large student population.

Lynchburg is also home to Virginia Episcopal School, a co-educational college-preparatory boarding school for grades 9-12.