Mcclure

How Mcclure began

McClure was laid out in April 1880 by John McClure at the crossing of the narrow-gauge Delphos and Toledo Railroad in Damascus Township, and grew through six separate plat additions over the following five years before incorporating in 1886. It was the only village ever platted in Damascus Township, and its founding roughly coincided with the arrival of the 'Clover Leaf' railroad route that shaped much of southeastern Henry County's late-nineteenth-century growth.

Platted April 15, 1880, by John McClure, incorporated 1886, by John McClure, with later additions by David Foltz, J. G. Markley and Ammond Smith.

Where the name comes from

The village is named for its founder and platter, John McClure, who laid out the original town site in 1880 on the line of the Delphos and Toledo narrow-gauge railroad.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or treaty site specific to the McClure town site is documented; the village was platted in 1880, roughly four decades after the last documented Native residents left this part of Henry County. See the Henry County and Damascus Township files for the fuller native-history record for this area, including General Wayne's 1794 encampment at Prairie du Masque on the same stretch of the Maumee valley.

Timeline

1. 1880-04-15 — John McClure records the original plat of the village, 711 feet square and divided into twenty-eight lots including depot grounds.
2. 1880 (first substantial building) — Thomas W. Durbin, previously a merchant at Texas in Washington Township, erects the village's first substantial building, a two-story frame store.
3. 1880 — A post office opens at McClure.
4. 1880 to 1881 — Andrew Johnson builds a hotel in the new village, and the Rowland brothers add an elevator and store, followed by the Counselman brothers' store, a stave factory and a planing-mill.
5. 1881-02-07 — John McClure adds an addition of thirty-two lots south of the original plat; further additions follow through 1885 from David Foltz, J. G. Markley and Ammond Smith.
6. 1886-08-10 — The village of McClure is formally incorporated.
7. 1887 — By this date McClure has about 500 residents, a post, express and telegraph office, one church, a two-story school, three general stores, a drug store, a hardware store, a saw-mill, a stave factory and a planing mill; natural gas and oil discoveries newly heat and light the town.
8. 1887 — Gas and oil have lately been struck at McClure, mains and pipes are laid, and the village of about 500 people is heated and lighted with natural gas.
9. 1890 — The first census after incorporation counts 332 people in McClure.
10. 1900 — McClure's population nearly doubles to 650.
11. 1908 — Residents form Citizens Mutual Telephone after Ohio Bell refuses to run rural lines, and buy Bell's equipment.
12. 1920 — McClure's census count falls to 433.
13. 1971-08 — The Ohio Public Utilities Commission approves the $100,000 sale of McClure's telephone company, the last magneto-phone system in Ohio.
14. 1975-11 — McClure residents give up their hand-cranked telephones.
15. 1990 — McClure reaches its census peak of 781 residents.
16. 2020 — The census counts 700 people in McClure.

Stories

A railroad town, platted in stages

McClure did not exist as a place at all until April 1880, when John McClure recorded a modest 711-foot-square plat of twenty-eight lots along the new narrow-gauge Delphos and Toledo railroad. What followed was rapid, almost improvised growth: over the next five years, McClure added a second and third addition of his own, while neighbors David Foltz, J. G. Markley and Ammond Smith each platted additions of their own on the town's edges, so that by the time the village incorporated in 1886 it had grown far beyond its original footprint. Thomas W. Durbin, who had previously kept store at the older river town of Texas, opened McClure's first substantial building, a two-story frame store, in the town's first year, and within seven years the young village supported three general stores, a hardware store, a hotel, a school and its own newly discovered supply of natural gas for heat and light -- a settlement built almost entirely on the railroad that gave it a reason to exist.

The last hand-cranked telephones in Ohio

Ohio Bell put the first telephone system into McClure in the 1890s, and residents rang the operator by turning a crank. When the company refused to string lines into the countryside, local people formed Citizens Mutual in 1908, bought the Bell equipment, and renamed the firm Citizens Mutual Telephone Company in 1909. In the 1940s a five-circuit toll line to Bowling Green was added. By the 1960s the board was weighing a sale, and in February 1968 members got a ballot on modernizing. In late 1969 the board voted to be bought by Otto Miller of Liberty Center, who renamed it McClure Telephone Company; the Public Utilities Commission approved the $100,000 sale in August 1971, and the Toledo Blade called McClure the last place in Ohio with magneto phones. A new central office and lines to nearly 500 subscribers followed, and in November 1975 the cranks went out of service.

Photographs

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

No water-system data is linked to Mcclure's ZIP codes yet.

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Police stations (1)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-09-17: county board of elections.

Elections for office

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

Auditor of State record

• Fiscal emergency: declared 2009-09-10, released 2013-10-22. source
• Basic Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-27

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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