Glouster

• Burr Oak LakeBuilt 1950 · 664 acres

How Glouster began

Glouster grew up in Trimble Township in the Sunday Creek Valley coal field, about 15 miles north of Athens, after coal shipping began there on September 15, 1882, and a 60-acre village was laid out. It was first called Sedalia and was renamed Glouster, a variant spelling of Gloucester, England, in 1886, when a post office opened under that name in 1887. Coal, brickmaking (the Wassall Brick Company operated 1895-1932), and the Kanawha and Michigan Railroad carried the village to a peak population of 3,140 in 1920. Like the rest of the Hocking Valley coalfield, Glouster shrank steadily after the mines closed, falling to 1,659 residents by 2020.

Platted 1882, sixty acres laid out as coal shipping began.

Where the name comes from

The village was first named Sedalia. It was renamed Glouster in 1886, a variant spelling of Gloucester, England; a post office opened under the new name in 1887.

Before the town

No site-specific Native American history (named villages, trails, or mounds) has been found for Glouster or the immediate village site. The 1881-83 county history records the Shawnee as occupying "the present county of Athens and adjacent region" broadly, and documents Adena/Hopewell-era mounds and an earthwork on "the Plains" in Athens and Dover townships, well south of Trimble Township — those are not specific to Glouster or Trimble Township.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Adena culture, Hopewell culture.

Timeline

1. 1882 — Coal shipping begins from mines in the area on September 15; a 60-acre village is laid out under the name Sedalia.
2. 1886 — The village is renamed Glouster, a variant spelling of Gloucester, England.
3. 1887 — A post office opens under the name Glouster.
4. 1895 — The Wassall Brick Company begins operating in Glouster, supplying structural brick across southeast Ohio.
5. 1907 — Glouster floods; a street-view photograph from March 14, 1907 documents the damage.
6. 1920 — Glouster records its peak population, 3,140 residents, at the height of the Sunday Creek Valley coal boom.
7. 1932 — The Wassall Brick Company ceases operations after roughly 37 years in business.
8. 1940 — Glouster Stadium on High Street is built by the WPA.
9. 2020 — Census population stands at 1,659, continuing a decline that began after coal mining wound down.

Stories

A mining village built almost overnight

Glouster did not grow slowly from a farm crossroads; it was platted deliberately in 1882, the same month coal began moving out of the Sunday Creek Valley field by rail, when a 60-acre village site was surveyed under the name Sedalia. Within a few years it was renamed Glouster after Gloucester, England, and a post office followed in 1887. The Kanawha and Michigan Railroad and the inexhaustible-looking Sunday Creek Valley coal seam pulled miners and their families in fast enough that by the 1890s the village was already claiming a population of about 3,000, unusually large for a mining town of that era. Coal remained the reason Glouster existed for the next four decades, supplemented after 1895 by the Wassall Brick Company, which turned local clay into structural brick shipped across southeast Ohio until it closed in 1932.

The Palos Covered Bridge and the W.P. Rice Mine

A mile north of Glouster, off State Route 13, a single-span kingpost-truss covered bridge crosses the east fork of Sunday Creek. Built to serve the W.P. Rice Mine, a coal operation that worked from 1913 to 1925, the Palos Covered Bridge outlasted the mine it was built for and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 11, 1977. It is one of the few physical survivors of the dozens of small mine operations that once worked the hills around Glouster, most of which left nothing behind but tipple foundations and slag.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Glouster Public Water System84% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Sunday Creek Valley Water14% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Trimble Village1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-irish Ridge0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (2)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Public libraries (1)

Police stations (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 6 of 6 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-08-12

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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