New Miami

How New Miami began

New Miami grew up as a coke and steel company town on the Great Miami River just north of Hamilton, originally known as Coke Otto, Otto, or Kokotto for its coal field and coke ovens; the United Coke and Gas Company built a battery of 120 coke ovens covering roughly 50 acres around 1905. The village incorporated in 1929, and the American Rolling Mill Company (later ARMCO, then AK Steel) bought the property in 1937, tying the community's fortunes to steelmaking for decades. New Miami drew national attention in the 2010s when its automated speed-camera program on U.S. Route 127, run under contract with Optotraffic starting in January 2013, generated over a million dollars before a Butler County judge shut it down in February 2014; a subsequent class-action lawsuit ultimately forced the village to refund about three million dollars collected from roughly 45,000 citations.

Incorporated 1929, by Grew from the coke-and-steel operations of the United Coke and Gas Company, originally known as Coke Otto.

Where the name comes from

The village was originally called Coke Otto (also rendered Otto or Kokotto), named for its coal field and coke-oven operations; it later took the name New Miami, reflecting its location on the Great Miami River near Hamilton.

Before the town

No Native village, trail, or burial site specifically within New Miami was found in the sources consulted. Miami and Shawnee people were present in the county along the Great Miami River, whose valley the village's own name references.

Timeline

1. 1905 — The United Coke and Gas Company builds a battery of 120 coke ovens covering about 50 acres at what was then called Coke Otto.
2. 1929 — New Miami incorporates as a village.
3. 1937 — The American Rolling Mill Company purchases the coke and steel property.
4. 1948 — American Rolling Mill rebrands as Armco, later becoming AK Steel Holdings, headquartered in neighboring Middletown.
5. 2013 — New Miami begins automated speed-camera enforcement on U.S. Route 127 in January, contracted to Optotraffic.
6. 2014 — A Butler County judge halts the speed-camera program in February, after it had generated over a million dollars from roughly 45,000 citations.
7. 2017 — The class-action lawsuit Barrow v. Village of New Miami concludes with the village ordered to refund about three million dollars in collected fines.

Stories

From Coke Otto to New Miami

Before it was New Miami, the village north of Hamilton on the Great Miami River was known by a string of industrial-era names: Coke Otto, Otto, or Kokotto, all pointing to the same thing, the coal field and coke-oven works that gave the place its reason to exist. Around 1905 the United Coke and Gas Company built out a battery of 120 coke ovens spread across roughly 50 acres, turning coal into the concentrated fuel steel mills needed, and the workers who ran those ovens built the community that incorporated as a village in 1929. Its industrial identity only deepened from there: the American Rolling Mill Company bought the property in 1937, and after rebranding as Armco in 1948 and later becoming part of AK Steel, the plant tied New Miami's fortunes to Middletown's much larger steel industry next door for the rest of the twentieth century -- a small company town that outlived the specific company that started it, carried along by the region's steel economy long after coke ovens gave way to modern steelmaking.

The camera that cost the village three million dollars

In January 2013, New Miami switched on an automated speed-camera system along U.S. Route 127, contracting with a company called Optotraffic to catch speeders without an officer present. The cameras worked efficiently -- too efficiently, in the eyes of many drivers and eventually the courts -- generating more than a million dollars in fines from roughly 45,000 citations before a Butler County judge ordered the program shut down in February 2014, ruling that it denied drivers meaningful due process. The legal fallout took years to resolve: a class-action lawsuit, Barrow v. Village of New Miami, worked through the courts from 2014 to 2017 and ended with a ruling that the village had to refund essentially everything the cameras had collected, close to three million dollars once interest and penalties were included, an unusually complete reversal for a small village's brief experiment with automated law enforcement.

Photographs

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

Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer, drawn from 16 production wells scattered through the City of Fairfield along the Great Miami River (river-induced infiltration), treated at the plant on River Road in Fairfield The water here

• Butler Co. Water District 244% of residentsHamilton wells (Great Miami aquifer) + Cincinnati (Ohio River + wells)
• Hamilton Public Water System39% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southwest Regional Water District14% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• New Miami Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Fairfield City1% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Cincinnati Public Water System0% of residentsOhio River (Miller Plant, ~88%) plus Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (~12%)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Police stations (1)

Superfund sites (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-07-27: county board of elections.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-03-25

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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