Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Nitro, WV

Nitro is a city spanning Kanawha and Putnam counties in West Virginia, lying primarily in Kanawha County along the Kanawha River across from St. Albans.

Nitro takes its name from nitrocellulose, the main ingredient in smokeless gunpowder, because the United States government built a large federal explosives plant there during World War I.

The plant, supervised by Daniel C. Jackling, was producing 100,000 pounds of high explosives per day by the time of the armistice, and the government spent about $80 million building the complex on an 1,800-acre site.

Nitro is known as a Living Memorial to World War I, a phrase that serves as the city's motto.

Nitro was incorporated in 1932.

The population of Nitro was 6,624 at the 2020 census.

The 2020 census counted 2,912 households and 3,277 housing units in Nitro.

Nitro is part of the Charleston metropolitan area and sits in the Kanawha River valley stretch known as Chemical Valley, which at its late-1950s and early-1960s peak was the leading producer of chemicals in the world.

Nitro High School and Nitro Elementary School are located in the city; Kanawha County middle school students bus to Andrew Jackson Middle School in Cross Lanes, while students on the Putnam County side attend the Poca schools.

Actor Clark Gable worked at Nitro's Explosive Plant C in 1918, and Major League Baseball pitcher Lew Burdette was born in Nitro in 1926.