Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Oconto, WI

Oconto is a city and the county seat of Oconto County, Wisconsin, located where the Oconto River meets Green Bay, with a population of 4,609 at the 2020 census.

Oconto is among the oldest settled places in Wisconsin: Copper Culture State Park preserves a burial ground dated to roughly 5000–6000 BC, considered the oldest cemetery in Wisconsin and one of the oldest in the nation.

The Old Copper Complex peoples lived around Oconto some 5,000 years ago and were among the earliest metalworkers in the Americas, hammering raw copper into tools and ornaments.

In 1669, Jesuit Father Claude Allouez founded the St. Francis Xavier Mission at present-day Oconto — the first mission in northeastern Wisconsin — near a Native village of about 600 people, and he is credited with saying the first Mass in Oconto.

Oconto's first dam and mill were built in 1844 by Colonel David Jones, and the Thomas Lindsey family arrived in 1846 as the city's first permanent settlers.

Oconto was incorporated as a city on March 11, 1869, and celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2019.

By the 1860s Oconto was a major lumber center with as many as 12 sawmills running at once, and its harbor, moved to its present location in 1875, sometimes held as many as 100 ships at anchor waiting to load.

Oconto was spared by the Great Peshtigo Fire of October 8, 1871, the deadliest wildfire in American history, which burned the outlying areas around the city and killed more than 1,200 people in neighboring Peshtigo.

The Chicago and North Western Railroad made Oconto a hub in 1871, with lines running west to Oconto Falls and north to Peshtigo and Marinette.

The Beyer Home, built in 1868 and believed to be one of the first brick homes in Oconto County, is now the Beyer Home & Carriage Museum, a Queen Anne-style house museum listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.