Coolville

How Coolville began

Coolville, in Troy Township in southeastern Athens County, began in 1814 when Simeon W. Cooley and his son Heman built a mill on the west bank of the Hockhocking, five miles above its mouth; Cooley laid out the town in 1818. The 1869 county history says it was incorporated in 1855 (Wikipedia says 1835) and had about 300 people, three churches, two district schools and a seminary. It grew as a farm-trade village rather than an industrial one; its population peaked at 672 in 1970 and was 454 in 2020. The PFOA contamination tied to DuPont's Washington Works belongs chiefly to Little Hocking, not to Coolville.

Settled 1814 (Simeon W. Cooley and son Heman, who built a mill), platted 1818, incorporated 1855 per the 1869 county history; 1835 per Wikipedia, by Simeon W. Cooley.

Where the name comes from

Coolville is named for Simeon W. Cooley, who began the settlement in 1814 with his son Heman and laid out the town in 1818; the spelling shifted from Cooleyville toward Coolville.

Before the town

No source specific to Coolville or the immediate river landing was found describing a named Native village, trail, or mound at this site. At the county level, Walker's 1869 History of Athens County records ancient mounds and an earthwork/fortification on 'the Plains' in Athens and Dover townships (skeletons, stone hatchets and weapons recovered), states that the Shawnee (Shawanese) held the Athens County region as part of the wider Scioto-Miami country, with Wyandot and Lenape (Delaware) parties frequently present on hunting and war expeditions, and describes a 1774 fortification, Fort Gower, built at the mouth of the Hocking River during Lord Dunmore's campaign, with army detachments traditionally said to have camped at Federal Creek and Sunday Creek elsewhere in the county. None of this is sited specifically at Coolville; treat it as county-wide context, not a claim about this river landing.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware).

• Fort Gower (camp) — mouth of the Hocking River, Troy Township, Athens County, 1774 (Lord Dunmore's War) (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1797 — Benajah Hoyt, probably the first white settler in Troy Township, comes from Nova Scotia to the mouth of the Hockhocking with his family.
2. 1799 — A party of about forty from near Springfield, Massachusetts, who had reached Belpre in 1798, settles on the Hockhocking about seven miles from its mouth; Xerxes Paulk and Horace Parsons, Baptist preachers, are among them.
3. 1805 — The first election for Troy Township officers is held at Ebenezer Buckingham's house; the township's population is 541 in 1820.
4. 1814 — Simeon W. Cooley and his son Heman begin the settlement at the future Coolville by building a mill.
5. 1818 — Simeon W. Cooley lays out the village that became Coolville, on the west bank of the Hockhocking River in southeastern Athens County.
6. 1833 — John Frame settles at Coolville, and begins merchandising in wool, grain and produce in 1840; Dr. John Pratt, from Schuyler County, New York, settles there in 1835.
7. 1835 — Coolville is formally incorporated as a village, per Wikipedia (the 1869 county history gives 1855).
8. 1846 — The Roots General and Feed store was built; the building still stands, remodeled into a residence with a business front.
9. 1869 — The county history describes Coolville as a pleasant village of about 300 on the west bank of the Hockhocking, with three churches, two district schools, a seminary, town hall and Masonic hall.
10. 1970 — Coolville's population peaked at 672 residents.
11. 2020 — Census recorded 454 residents, continuing a decline from the 1970 peak.

Stories

A town of hot and cold names

Coolville sits in a small pocket of southeastern Athens and northern Meigs counties where local place names seem to play off one another: Coolville itself, plus the unincorporated Athens County communities of Torch and Frost, and Snowville just over the line in Meigs County. None of the names are formally connected — Coolville comes from founder Simeon Cooley's surname, not the weather — but residents and local writers have long noted the coincidence as a piece of area trivia. It is one of the small oddities that distinguish an otherwise ordinary southeastern Ohio farm town.

A river town outgrown by its highway

Coolville grew up as a mill village and trade stop near what became U.S. Route 50, the road linking Athens to the Ohio River crossings toward Parkersburg, West Virginia. The village held two stores, a gristmill and a sawmill by the 1830s, a bank later in the century whose building is now the Village Hall, and the Roots General and Feed store built in 1846. When U.S. 50 was rerouted around the village in the late twentieth century, through-traffic and the trade it brought went with it, and Coolville's population fell from a 1970 peak of 672 to 454 by 2020 — a decline visible today in stretches where, as one Wikimedia Commons photograph caption puts it, 'US 50 used to run past this site.'

Dunmore's camp at the mouth of the Hockhocking

When the first Ohio Company settlers reached Troy Township in 1798 and 1799, the outline of Lord Dunmore's 1774 camping ground at the mouth of the Hockhocking was still visible: about twenty acres grown up in young saplings and underbrush, looking like an old clearing. For years afterwards settlers plowing their fields turned up hatchets, gun barrels and bullets from his army, and a rusty sword found near the roots of a fallen tree on the west side of the river ended up in the college museum at Athens. Kingman Dutton, who settled at the mouth in 1806, kept a number of canoes and pirogues to carry emigrants and their goods up the Hockhocking, since most newcomers to Athens County came down the Ohio and then ascended that river. Coolville, five miles up on the west bank, grew from a mill Simeon Cooley and his son built there in 1814.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · littlehockingwater.org · littlehockingwater.org · littlehockingwater.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Little Hocking Water Association, Inc.46% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (own wells, Porterfield wellfield)
• Coolville Village35% of residentsLocal groundwater wells near Long Bottom (Ohio River valley area)
• Tuppers Plains/chester Water District19% of residentsLocal groundwater wells near Long Bottom (Ohio River valley area)

Community health centers (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Public libraries (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-24

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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