Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Ripon, WI

Ripon is a city in Fond du Lac County, founded in 1849 by David P. Mapes, a former New York steamboat captain, and incorporated as a city in 1858.

Settler John S. Horner named Ripon for the English cathedral city of Ripon in North Yorkshire, where his immigrant ancestors originated, and he also named most of the city's streets.

Within two years of its founding, Ripon absorbed the neighboring commune of Ceresco, established in 1844 by the Wisconsin Phalanx, a group of settlers inspired by the communitarian socialist philosophy of Charles Fourier.

Ripon is famous as the birthplace of the Republican Party: on March 20, 1854, a group of opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act met in a local schoolhouse and called for the organization of a new political party.

That building, the Little White Schoolhouse, built in 1850, is preserved as a museum and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974; it has been moved at least six times over its history.

Ripon College, a private liberal arts college, was chartered on January 29, 1851 as Brockway College by Mapes and other townspeople and took the name Ripon College in 1864.

Carrie Chapman Catt, the Ripon native who led the campaign to ratify the 19th Amendment giving American women the vote, is commemorated by a monument in the city.

H. Gordon Selfridge, founder of the Selfridges department store in London, was born in Ripon.

The National Forensic League, the national high school speech and debate organization founded by Ripon College professor Bruno E. Jacob, is based in Ripon.

Ripon is home to Alliance Laundry Systems, the maker of Speed Queen commercial laundry equipment.