Vanlue

How Vanlue began

Vanlue was platted in May 1847 by William Vanlue on land in Amanda Township near where Thomas Thompson, the township's first settler, had built a cabin and planted the county's first crop a quarter-century earlier. The village grew into a substantial grain market after the railroad reached it, and a post office opened in 1850. Its population has swung between roughly 340 and 540 over the last century and a half, peaking in 1970. About two miles east, just across the county line, lies Sheriden Cave, one of Ohio's most important Paleo-Indian sites, where tools and animal remains dated to 11,000-12,000 years ago were found in a sinkhole. Vanlue remains a small farm-market village in eastern Hancock County today.

Settled 1822-1823 (Thomas Thompson settles nearby, the area's first entry and crop), platted May 1847, by William Vanlue, with an initial forty-four lots, by William Vanlue.

Where the name comes from

The village is named for its founder, William Vanlue, who platted it in 1847.

Before the town

No named Native village, mound, or treaty reserve is recorded within the site of Vanlue itself in the sources checked. About two miles east of the village, across the Hancock-Wyandot county line in Ridge Township, Wyandot County, is Sheriden Cave, a karst sinkhole where excavations beginning in the 1990s recovered radiocarbon-dated bone tools, a fluted Clovis-culture spear point, and remains of extinct Ice Age animals including giant short-faced bear and stag moose, showing human use of the area roughly 11,000 to 12,000 years ago -- among the earliest and best-documented evidence of human presence anywhere in Ohio. The cave is outside Hancock County and is not itself a Vanlue site, but its closeness marks the surrounding Blanchard's Fork valley as long-inhabited ground. No historic-era (1700s-1800s) Native village or reserve specific to Vanlue was found in the sources reviewed.

• Sheriden Cave (near, not within, Vanlue) (other) — Ridge Township, Wyandot County, Ohio, about 2 miles east of Vanlue, Paleo-Indian, roughly 11,000-12,000 years before present (radiocarbon dated) (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1847-05 — William Vanlue plats the village with an initial forty-four lots.
2. 1850 — A post office opens at Vanlue.
3. 1873-10-26 — Thomas Thompson, Amanda Township's first settler and first Justice of the Peace, dies at Vanlue.
4. 1880 — Vanlue's population is recorded as 364 in that year's federal census, its earliest census figure.
5. 1881 — The county history notes Vanlue 'was a very considerable grain market for a number of years after the completion of the railroad.'
6. 1970 — Vanlue's population peaks at 539, a 39.6% jump from 1960.
7. 1995-1997 — A bulldozer exposes Sheriden Cave, near Vanlue across the county line, and Kent State University archaeologist Kenneth Tankersley begins excavations that uncover Paleo-Indian tools and Ice Age animal remains.

Stories

A grain town built on a founder's own name

William Vanlue laid out his namesake village in May 1847 on Amanda Township ground that Thomas Thompson had first claimed twenty-five years earlier, in 1822, when he built a cabin near the Big Springs and planted what the county history counts as the township's first crop. Vanlue the village took a generation to become more than a crossroads, but once a railroad reached it the difference was dramatic: the 1881 county history records it as 'a very considerable grain market for a number of years after the completion of the railroad,' as wheat and corn from Amanda Township's farms funneled through its elevators. The village's population has risen and fallen with the fortunes of small-town Ohio ever since, from 364 residents at its first census in 1880 to a high of 539 in 1970 before settling near 340 in recent counts.

Ice-Age hunters two miles from the grain elevator

A short drive east of Vanlue, a bulldozer clearing ground in 1995 broke into a sinkhole that turned out to hold one of the most important Paleo-Indian sites in the eastern United States. Kenneth Tankersley of Kent State University led excavations there for about three years starting in 1997, recovering bone spear points, a flint hide-scraper, a fluted Clovis-culture point, and even preserved plant matter and human waste, alongside the bones of extinct Ice Age animals -- a giant short-faced bear, a stag moose, a flat-headed peccary, a giant beaver. Radiocarbon dating put the material at 11,000 to 12,000 years old, meaning people were camping and hunting in this stretch of the Blanchard's Fork valley roughly ten thousand years before William Vanlue platted his village, in weather and with wildlife almost unrecognizable from the farm country that surrounds Vanlue today.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Vanlue Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (2)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026 edition (Directory of Officials): 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

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-11-25

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.

Cite this page