Union City

How Union City began

Union City, Ohio grew up on the Ohio side of the Ohio-Indiana state line in Jackson Township, its own plat laid out by Josiah Mongar in 1853 (a later date than the 1838 platting Wikipedia gives), after the Dayton and Union Railroad reached the site on December 25, 1852, and a second line followed the next year. It incorporated in 1853 and by 1880 formed one dual-state city with Union City, Indiana across the line, the Indiana side counting about 5,000 residents and the Ohio side nearly 2,000. An 1880 county history describes a young industrial town of sawmills, a steam flouring mill, brickyards, a stave-and-heading works and a butter-tub factory, built up within thirty years of open forest and blazed paths. The Lambert-Parent House is the village's National Register-listed landmark.

Platted 1853 (Josiah Mongar, Ohio side, per the 1880 county history); Wikipedia gives 1838, incorporated 1853 (petition filed with the Darke County Auditor Sept. 4, 1853; certified May 13, 1854); Wikipedia gives 1853-12-06, by Josiah Mongar (original 40-acre plat); additions by John Haas, the Brownley, Smith, and Fowler families, and Mr. Archard.

Where the name comes from

Named for the union of the Ohio and Indiana settlements straddling the state line; the village markets itself as 'the Hub of Two States.'

Before the town

No Native American village or site specific to present-day Union City is documented in the sources checked. The 1880 county history notes that the first grave made on the Ohio side -- that of War of 1812 and Revolutionary War veteran Edward Payne, buried under a beech tree before any cemetery existed -- was later moved to a proper cemetery; it also records that gravel hills elsewhere in Jackson Township were used by an earlier, unidentified people as burial grounds. The village sits on Darke County's western edge, part of the broader Miami and Shawnee homeland ceded under the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

Timeline

1. 1852-01 — Jerry Smith buys the quarter-section that becomes the original plat of Union City, Indiana, from Augustus Loveland for $1,200, land Smith had inherited from his father-in-law, Mr. Crumrine.
2. 1852-12-25 — The Dayton and Union Railroad is completed to Union City, the first railroad to reach the settlement; a second line (later the Bee Line) is finished the following year.
3. 1853 — Josiah Mongar plats the Ohio side of Union City on 40 acres at the center of the corporation, donating 10 acres to the railroad for shops and switches and building a sawmill; John Haas, the Brownley family, Jerry and Oliver Smith, and the Fowler and Archard additions extend the plat through 1880.
4. 1853-09-04 — A petition for incorporation of Union City, Ohio is filed with the Darke County Auditor; it is allowed that December, filed for record January 5, 1854, and the certified copy is dated May 13, 1854.
5. 1853 — The village's first school opens, taught by Miss May Ensminger in her father's house on Howard Street; the first public school follows in the winter of 1853-54, held in a Bee Line railroad boarding-car.
6. 1874 — Union City's waterworks are completed: a 20-foot well supplying 800 gallons per minute, pushed through the city by two engines.
7. 1880 — An 1876 account by resident Alfred Lenox, reprinted in the Times, puts the Ohio side's population at about 1,500 and describes a stave-and-heading works employing 20-30 hands, a planing mill and lumberyard, a furniture factory, a hub-spoke-and-chair factory, two steam sawmills, a steam flouring mill, five brickmaking firms and a tile works, all run by steam.

Stories

One name, one street, two states

Union City is really two towns wearing one name: an Indiana side platted from land Jerry Smith bought in 1852, and an Ohio side platted the following year by Josiah Mongar, each with its own mayor, council and municipal budget, yet functioning for residents as a single community split down the middle. By 1880 the county history counted about 5,000 people on the Indiana side and nearly 2,000 on the Ohio side, a combined city of roughly 7,000 that had grown almost entirely since the first railroad reached the site on December 25, 1852. The arrangement is old enough that the railroad simply ran through both halves as one stop, and the Ohio village still bills itself today as 'the Hub of Two States' rather than pretend the border defines its daily life.

A saloon war on one side of the street

The first building finished in Union City, Indiana held a saloon, and the county history records that its opening was followed almost immediately by the simultaneous discharge of seventeen railroad employees, blamed on the saloon's influence. What followed was a sustained temperance campaign on the Indiana side that, by 1880, had succeeded completely: not a single saloon operated there. The Ohio side told the opposite story -- by the county history's count, it had thirteen saloons in 1880, alongside billiard rooms and an ale manufactory, a stark and specific illustration of how two halves of one city, governed under two different states' laws, could diverge on a single issue within the space of a shared main street.

From open forest to a factory town in one lifetime

By 1880, the Ohio side of Union City supported a cluster of specific, named industries built up almost entirely since the railroad's arrival less than thirty years earlier: a grain warehouse handling roughly a quarter-million bushels a year; a brick and tile works turning out 10,000 bricks a day; the Union City Slack Barrel Stave and Heading Works, built in 1870 by Hugh Wiggins & Son of Dayton, capable of 20,000 staves and up to 10,000 headings daily; a butter-tub and pail factory that the Hook brothers relocated from Cardington in Morrow County after exhausting the local timber supply there; and a steam flouring mill, built by S. P. McMillan and Thomas Workman, still grinding 100 barrels a day under a later owner. The county historian who assembled these figures noted that it would be 'pleasant' to have witnessed firsthand the change from farm to hamlet to city, contrasting the industrial scene of 1880 with the 'savagery' of the forest less than thirty years before -- crediting the railroad itself as the engine of the transformation.

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

Every historic place in Darke County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Union City Village97% of residentsLocal groundwater wells (Randolph County, IN)
• A and R Union City Park MHP3% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Police stations (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 2 of 3 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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

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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