Zaleski

How Zaleski began

Zaleski was laid out in 1856 on the land of the Zaleski Mining Company as a company mining town, and named for Peter V. Zaleski, a native of Poland and a leading member of the company. It grew quickly on coal, iron and the railroad, with the Zaleski Furnace and the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad's car shops, and was incorporated as a village in 1875. The village sits at the edge of three surviving Adena burial mounds and borders the 28,000-acre Zaleski State Forest, Ohio's second-largest state forest, which took the village's name once the iron and coal era gave way to reforestation. Zaleski's population has fallen to 230 as of 2020.

Platted 1856, incorporated 1875, by named for Peter Zaleski.

Where the name comes from

Named for Peter V. Zaleski, a native of Poland and a leading member of the Zaleski Mining Company, which laid the town out on its land in 1856.

Before the town

The Zaleski Mound Group, three surviving conical earthworks of the prehistoric Adena culture (out of an original six), stands at the edge of the village near the Zaleski United Methodist Church on Broadway Street and at the entrance to Zaleski State Forest. No historic-era (1700s) Native village or camp specific to the town site was found in the sources checked.

Nations recorded here: Adena culture.

• Zaleski Mound Group (Markham Mound, Ranger Station Mound, Zaleski Methodist Church Mound) (mound) — village of Zaleski, at the edge of Zaleski State Forest, Adena, c. 800 BC-AD 100 (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1856 — Zaleski is laid out on Zaleski Mining Company land and named for Peter V. Zaleski, a native of Poland and a leading member of the company.
2. 1854-1874 — Nearby Hope Furnace operates through Zaleski's early decades.
3. 1875 — Zaleski is incorporated as a village.
4. 1850s — The Ranger Station Mound, one of the Zaleski Mound Group's Adena earthworks, has a cold cellar excavated into it, disturbing the original mound.
5. 1959 — The Ohio Department of Natural Resources restores the Ranger Station Mound after the earlier cold-cellar excavation.
6. 1974-05-03 — Markham Mound, part of the Zaleski Mound Group, is added to the National Register of Historic Places.
7. 1974-07-15 — The Ranger Station Mound and Zaleski Methodist Church Mound are added to the National Register of Historic Places.
8. 2000-03-09 — Masonic Lodge No. 472 in Zaleski is added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

Three mounds where six once stood

Long before the Zaleski Mining Company laid out a town here in 1856, people of the Adena culture built six burial mounds at what is now the edge of Zaleski. Three have been destroyed over the intervening two centuries of farming and development; the three that survive — the Markham Mound, the Ranger Station Mound, and the Zaleski Methodist Church Mound — were all listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The Ranger Station Mound, at 14.4 feet the tallest of the three, had a cold cellar dug into it in the 1850s by settlers who had no idea, or no concern, that they were digging into a 2,000-year-old burial monument; the state restored it in 1959. The Methodist Church Mound, by contrast, remains largely undisturbed and may still hold its original grave goods. Destroyed mounds cannot be registered, so what stands today is a fraction of what the valley once held.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Vinton County on the full map

Groundwater wells (3 wells) The water here

• Zaleski Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 4 of 4 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

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 2026-07-28, still in effect. source
• Fiscal Emergency Analysis - Declaration, 2025 to 2026, released 2026-07-28

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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