The Monarch Fire Protection District provides services for an area of more than 62 square miles and 60,000 people in the communities of Chesterfield, Ballwin, Clarkson Valley, Creve Coeur, Maryland Heights and Wildwood and in unincorporated St. Louis County. The district has 125 employees and answered 6,100 alarms in 2009. Founded as the Bellefontaine Volunteer Fire Department in 1925, the district became the tax-supported Chesterfield Fire Protection District in 1957 and was renamed the Monarch Fire Protection District in 2003.