Holiday City

How Holiday City began

Holiday City is the youngest incorporated place in Williams County. It was platted and incorporated on the same day, June 24, 1997, to serve the Ohio Turnpike interchange where State Route 15 and U.S. 20 Alternate meet the toll road, now Exit 13, the last westbound exit before the toll. That section of the turnpike, from the east to the Indiana line, opened on October 1, 1955. The village covers about 2.6 square miles in the northwest corner of Jefferson Township, land first settled by farm families in the 1830s. Its population has stayed around fifty: 49 in 2000, 52 in 2010 and 48 in 2020.

Settled 1997, platted 1997-06-24, incorporated 1997-06-24.

Where the name comes from

The origin of the name is not recorded. The village was created mainly to provide services at an Ohio Turnpike exit.

Before the town

No Native village, trail or treaty site specific to Holiday City is recorded in the sources checked. For the surrounding Jefferson Township, the 1905 county history says that when John Shankster settled there in 1835, 'the Indians far exceeded the whites in number,' but it does not name a people or a place. The 1817 Treaty of the Maumee Rapids had carried Indian title to this land to the United States.

Timeline

1. 1817 — The Treaty of the Maumee Rapids carries Indian title to this part of northwestern Ohio, including the future site of Holiday City, to the United States.
2. 1833 — John Perkins, who had built the first mills at Brunersburg, settles near Pulaski and enters all of section 34 of Jefferson Township, and Eli Oliver comes from Pickaway County in the fall, the first settlers of the township.
3. 1835 — John Shankster, born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1806, settles with his sons on the southwest quarter of section 28, and George W. Myers of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, enters 160 acres.
4. 1837 — The county commissioners erect Jefferson Township, the township in whose northwest corner Holiday City now lies.
5. 1837 — At its first election, held July 2 at Andrew Ferrier Jr.'s house, Jefferson Township chooses Thomas Reid first justice of the peace; Ferrier builds the township's first grist mill on Beaver Creek the same year.
6. 1839 — Joel F. Pool teaches the first school in Jefferson Township, in an old house on Thomas Reid's land; the township takes its present rectangular form when Bridgewater and Millcreek townships are organized.
7. 1847 — On June 20 six-year-old David Schamp is murdered in the east of Jefferson Township by Daniel Heckerthorn, a seventeen-year-old of limited understanding, at the urging of a self-styled fortune teller, Andrew J. Tyler, in what the 1905 county history calls the worst crime in the county's annals.
8. 1849 — Tyler, convicted in the fall of 1848 by the Supreme Court sitting at Maumee City, is hanged in public view on January 26 after a crowd demolishes, the evening before, the enclosure the sheriff had built for the execution; Heckerthorn's death sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.
9. 1894 — The Atlas of Williams County shows the land of the future village as farms in Jefferson Township, on sheet 15.
10. 1955 — On October 1, the Ohio Turnpike opens from exit 218 west to the Indiana line, including the stretch across Williams County.
11. 1997-06-24 — Holiday City is platted and incorporated as a village on the same day, created mainly to provide services at an Ohio Turnpike exit.
12. 2000 — The first census after incorporation counts 49 residents.
13. 2002 — In September, the Ohio Turnpike retires its sequential exit numbers in favor of mileposts, and the Holiday City interchange with State Route 15 becomes Exit 13.
14. 2020 — The census counts 48 residents.

Stories

A village built for a toll road

The Ohio Turnpike's western section, from the east to the Indiana line, opened on October 1, 1955. In Williams County it had interchanges at State Route 49 near Edon and at State Route 15 and U.S. 20 Alternate between Bryan and Montpelier. For four decades the land at the Route 15 interchange remained part of Jefferson Township. On June 24, 1997, the ground at the interchange was platted and incorporated as the village of Holiday City on a single day, mainly to provide services at the exit. When the turnpike renumbered its exits by milepost in 2002, the Holiday City interchange became Exit 13, the last westbound exit before the toll. The village has had about fifty residents in every census since.

The fortune teller and the knot on the beech tree

On June 20, 1847, six-year-old David Schamp, son of Peter D. Schamp, who lived on section twelve in the east of Jefferson Township, was lured from his home into the woods and killed. The county history of 1905 calls it the most atrocious crime in Williams County's annals. A roaming self-styled fortune teller, Andrew J. Tyler, had told the Schamps' fortune, learned that the family had some means, and talked a seventeen-year-old of limited understanding, Daniel Heckerthorn, into taking the boy and hiding the body so that Tyler could 'find' it for a large fee. Heckerthorn gave the child candy laced with arsenic and then struck his head against a beech tree and hid the body in a hollow log under brush. The search drew men and boys from a distance, and by Thursday the woods for miles were full of people; that afternoon suspicion fell on Heckerthorn, who was found hiding at his brother's house and soon confessed, naming Tyler. Because the old log jail at Bryan was not thought safe, both men were held at Maumee City until the fall of 1848, when Tyler chose to be tried before the Supreme Court sitting in the county and was convicted; the knot cut from the beech tree was brought into court as evidence. Sheriff Daniel Langel built an enclosure for the hanging set for January 26, 1849, but the people tore it down the evening before and Tyler was hanged in public view. Heckerthorn was sentenced to hang but, because of his youth and understanding, the sentence was commuted to life, and about ten years later he was offered a conditional pardon; he never returned to Williams County. Holiday City, founded in 1997, lies in the northwest corner of the same township.

Photographs

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

Groundwater wells (4 wells) The water here

• Montpelier Village87% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Seneca10% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Williams Co/hillside Country Living2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-07-06: county board of elections.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-03-19

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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