Times Beach, Missouri was a small town of 2,240 residents in St. Louis County, Missouri

St. Louis County, Missouri

St. Louis County is a county located in the U.S. state of Missouri. Its county seat is Clayton. St. Louis County is part of the St. Louis Metro Area wherein the independent City of St. Louis and its suburbs in St. Louis County, as well as the surrounding counties in both Missouri and Illinois all...

, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 and 2 mi (3 km) east of Eureka, Missouri

Eureka, Missouri

Eureka is a city located in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States, between St. Louis and Pacific, Missouri, along Interstate 44. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 10,189. The city is west of the former site of Times Beach, the site of dioxin contamination discovered in...

. The town was completely evacuated early in 1983 due to a dioxin scare that made national headlines. It was the largest civilian exposure to dioxin in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

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Times Beach was founded in 1925 on the flood plain of the Meramec River in a promotion by the now-defunct St.