Jacksonville

How Jacksonville began

Jacksonville was laid out in 1879 by Oliver D. Jackson along Sunday Creek in northwestern Athens County, growing quickly as a coal-mining camp; a post office opened there in 1884 and is still running. The village's population peaked around 1,285 in 1910 at the height of the coal boom and has fallen steadily since, to 400 by the 2020 census. Sunday Creek itself carries the district's environmental legacy: an Ohio EPA study in 1997 found its lower thirteen miles, which run past Jacksonville and neighboring Trimble, 'irretrievably damaged' by acid mine drainage from the historic mines. The village's water system has also logged a recurring string of federal monitoring and reporting violations from 2000 into the 2020s.

Platted 1879, by Oliver D. Jackson.

Where the name comes from

Jacksonville is named for its founder, Oliver D. Jackson, who laid out the village in 1879 as coal mining developed along Sunday Creek.

Before the town

No source specific to the Jacksonville village site was found naming a Native village, camp, or trail there. At the county level, Walker's 1883 History of Athens County places the Shawnee (Shawanese) in possession of the wider Scioto-Miami country including Athens County, with Wyandot and Lenape (Delaware) parties present on hunting and war expeditions, and records a tradition that troops in Lord Dunmore's 1774 campaign camped along Sunday Creek itself, the waterway Jacksonville sits on — though not at the later village site, which was not founded for another century. This should be read as county- and creek-level context, not a claim about the village site specifically.

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

• Sunday Creek encampment tradition (camp) — Sunday Creek, Athens County (exact location not specified), 1774 (Lord Dunmore's War) (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1774 — Tradition recorded in the 1883 county history holds that troops from Lord Dunmore's campaign camped along Sunday Creek, the stream Jacksonville later grew up beside.
2. 1879 — Oliver D. Jackson laid out Jacksonville village along Sunday Creek as coal mining developed in the area.
3. 1884 — A post office named Jacksonville was established; it continues operating.
4. 1910 — Jacksonville's population peaked at about 1,285 during the coal-mining era.
5. 1997 — An Ohio EPA study found the lower 13 miles of Sunday Creek, running past Jacksonville, 'irretrievably damaged to the extent that no appreciable aquatic life can be supported' by acid mine drainage from historic coal mining.
6. 2012 — The Sunday Creek Watershed Group, sponsored by the nonprofit Rural Action, began sustained remediation and monitoring work on the creek's water quality.
7. 2020 — Census recorded 400 residents, down from the 1910 peak of about 1,285.

Stories

A coal camp on a poisoned creek

Jacksonville was one of a string of villages — with Buchtel, Trimble, and others nearby — that sprang up along Sunday Creek in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as coal operators opened mines through the Hocking Valley coal district. Oliver D. Jackson laid the town out in 1879, and by 1910 it held roughly 1,285 people, a peak it has never approached again. The mines that built the town were also its long environmental legacy: decades of underground and surface mining released acid mine drainage into Sunday Creek, and by the time the Ohio EPA studied the stream in 1997, the lower thirteen miles — the stretch running past Jacksonville and Trimble on the way to the Hocking River at Chauncey — could no longer support appreciable aquatic life. Since 2012 the Sunday Creek Watershed Group, working with the regional nonprofit Rural Action, has pursued treatment and remediation projects aimed at bringing the creek back.

Photographs

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

Six wells (4 MGD combined) in a sand-and-gravel aquifer in the Hocking River Buried Valley aquifer system, Dover Township, Athens County (2025 CCR). Ohio EPA's May 2012 source water assessment rates the source highly susceptible to contamination (thin clay cover, aquifer less than 20 ft deep). The water here

• Jacksonville Village100% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 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

• Fiscal emergency: declared 1984-04-02, released 1986-06-17. source
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-15

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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