Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Saltville, VA

Saltville is a town that straddles the line between Smyth County and Washington County in Southwest Virginia, and it is part of the Tri-Cities metropolitan region around Kingsport and Bristol.

The town is named for the natural salt marshes in its valley, which drew wildlife and hunters long before European settlement.

Excavations at Saltville's SV-2 archaeological site have recovered well-preserved skeletons of extinct Ice Age animals, making the salt valley one of the notable paleontological localities in the eastern United States.

The valley was home to the Chisca people, and a Spanish force under Hernando Moyano de Morales attacked and burned the Chisca village of Maniatique in 1567, a settlement that may have stood at or near present-day Saltville.

The 2020 census counted 1,824 people in Saltville living in 772 households.

During the Civil War, Saltville's saltworks were among the Confederacy's most important, because salt was essential for preserving meat for soldiers and civilians.

Union forces attacked the works in the First Battle of Saltville on October 2, 1864, and were defeated; after the battle, wounded Black Union troops were murdered in what became known as the Saltville Massacre, for which guerrilla leader Champ Ferguson was later tried and executed.

Two months later, in December 1864, Union cavalry under General George Stoneman won the Second Battle of Saltville and destroyed the saltworks, a serious blow to the shrinking Confederacy.

Hydrazine rocket fuel produced by the Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation plant in Saltville was used in the rocket that carried the Apollo 11 astronauts on the first mission to land humans on the Moon.

On Christmas Eve 1924, Saltville's Muck Dam collapsed and released a huge volume of liquid chemical waste from the Mathieson Alkali Company into the North Fork of the Holston River, killing 19 people and leaving the river polluted and virtually dead for decades.