ZIP code 43021: Genoa Township and Galena

Drinking-water compliance

A health-based violation is a contaminant above its limit or a treatment rule not followed; monitoring, reporting and public-notice violations are paperwork. Lead is the 90th-percentile result across sampled homes, not a reading at any one tap.

Source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (Envirofacts, pulled September 2026), violations and lead and copper sampling for the system that serves most of this ZIP · EPA SDWIS (Envirofacts) · EPA ECHO

Byproducts and contaminants

TTHM

55.9 µg/L yearly mean in 2019, the last year in the file (limit 80); worst yearly mean 60.9, highest single sample 95.7; 256 samples from 2012 to 2019

HAA5

35.8 µg/L yearly mean in the last year sampled (limit 60); worst yearly mean 37.8, highest sample 58; 256 samples

Plants

Del-co Water Company, Inc. runs 4 plants and EPA's file lumps their entry-point samples under one system, so the nitrate, arsenic, radioactivity, solvent, farm-chemical and metal rows cover all 4, not only Ralph E. Scott Water Treatment Plant (Alum Creek), which serves this ZIP; a sample over a limit may be from another plant

Nitrate

highest of 225 samples was 2.3 mg/L as nitrogen (2015; limit 10); 1.86 in 2019, the last year sampled. Nitrate above 10 is unsafe for infants

Arsenic

not detected in 31 samples (limit 10)

Solvents and fuels

benzene, carbon tetrachloride, 1,2-dichloroethane, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, vinyl chloride not detected in 28 samples

Bacteria

1 of 11,459 routine tap samples (0.01%) tested positive for total coliform in 2012 to 2019, 1 of 1,440 in 2019; E. coli found in 1 of 2 tap samples tested for it. Coliform itself is a warning sign; E. coli means sewage or manure reached the water

Farm chemicals

atrazine in 55 of 57 samples, highest 1.55 µg/L (limit 3); alachlor in 1 of 57 samples, highest 0.6 µg/L (limit 2)

Metals

barium in 23 of 31 samples, highest 34 µg/L (limit 2,000); chromium, cadmium, mercury, selenium, thallium not detected in 31 samples

EPA's file stops at 2019; Ohio EPA's Drinking Water Watch has newer results. Byproducts are judged on running yearly averages at each sampling site, so one high sample is not a violation. Nitrate and arsenic are measured where water enters the pipes.

Source: EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring data, 2012 to 2019 (TTHM, HAA5 and coliform from distribution-system samples of Del-co Water Company, Inc.; nitrate, arsenic, radionuclides, solvents, herbicides and metals from the entry points of the same system); non-detects counted as zero

PFAS

UCMR 5, all plants

11 samples in 2023 to 2024 at the entry point to the distribution system: PFBA 10.7, PFHxA 8.7, PFPeA 6.3 ng/L

Ohio EPA 2020

3 plants tested (latest 2020-10): nothing detected for the six PFAS tested

Ohio EPA latest

3 plants sampled by Ohio EPA, most recently 2024-04 (Ohio EPA statewide sampling status map)

Firefighting foam: 3 fire departments or other holders in Delaware County registered 355 gallons of PFAS-based AFFF foam with Ohio EPA, 165 gallons in opened containers; the state is collecting it for disposal so it is never sprayed again.

Lithium: found in 2 of 10 UCMR 5 samples at Del-co Water Company, Inc., highest 12.9 µg/L (detections averaged 12.6), last sampled 2024. Lithium is unregulated; EPA's draft health reference level is 10 µg/L, and it occurs naturally in deep groundwater, so well systems in the northwest run highest.

PFAS are the forever chemicals from firefighting foam, plating shops and non-stick coatings. One sample above 4 ng/L is not a violation; compliance is judged on running annual averages, and systems are adding carbon filters ahead of the 2029 deadline. Results are for water leaving the plant, not your tap.

Source: EPA UCMR 5 occurrence data (final release, August 2026) and Ohio EPA statewide PFAS sampling 2019 to 2021 and its current status map, for the system that serves most of this ZIP; EPA SDWIS record OH2101412; results in nanograms per litre (parts per trillion) · Ohio EPA PFAS

Lead at the tap

Latest period

0.8 ppb in the sampling period ending 2024-12

Highest since 2016

5.9 ppb (2018-12); never above 10 ppb in 3 periods

Service lines

56,197 inventoried: 9 lead, 19 galvanized needing replacement, 14,186 unknown, 41,983 not lead (reported all required service line types)

Children: this ZIP is not on the Ohio Department of Health's high-risk list for childhood lead testing; children on Medicaid or in pre-1978 housing with peeling paint should still be tested.

Housing age: 10% of the homes here were built before 1960 and 7% before 1940, when lead service lines, lead solder and lead paint were common; 22% predate 1980 (Census ACS 2020 to 2024).

Systems sample taps in the homes most likely to have lead pipes or solder; the 90th-percentile figure means nine in ten sampled homes were at or below it. Lead comes from the service line and the house plumbing, not the source water, so a low system result does not clear an old house. The action level drops from 15 to 10 ppb in 2027, and every lead line must be replaced within ten years of that.

Source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System lead and copper 90th-percentile results (Envirofacts) and EPA's service line inventory dashboard (2026 Q2), for Del-co Water Company, Inc. (OH2101412), the system that serves most of this ZIP · ODH childhood lead testing · ODH high-risk ZIP list (CCBH PDF) · Ohio EPA lead and copper · H2Ohio

Fluoride and treatment

Treatment on file: corrosion control, coagulation and settling, chlorine disinfection, iron and manganese removal, lime softening, powdered activated carbon, sand or media filtration.

Measured fluoride: 1.04 mg/L on average at the plant's entry points in 2019 (in the range dentists aim for); samples ran from 0.68 to 1.2 mg/L across 31 samples in 2012 to 2019 (EPA compliance monitoring). Natural fluoride in Ohio well water runs from a trace to over 2 mg/L in parts of the northwest.

The health department counts 100% of Delaware County residents on community water as receiving fluoridated water.

Ohio law (ORC 6109.20, 1969) makes systems serving 5,000 or more people fluoridate unless the water already carries 0.8 mg/L naturally or the community exempted itself by ordinance or referendum in the months after the law passed; smaller systems choose for themselves. The treatment list is what each system registered with EPA and can lag a plant upgrade.

Source: CDC My Water's Fluoride, fluoridation status of each system as reported by the Ohio Department of Health; EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System treatment table for Del-co Water Company, Inc. (OH2101412); EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring, 2012 to 2019; Ohio Department of Health fluoridation report (DataOhio) for the county share · EPA SDWIS search

Algal toxins

Raw water

no microcystin detected at the intake

Treated water

never detected after treatment

Monitoring

631 samples from 2016 to 2026, latest 2026-08-24

Raw-water readings show what the plant has to remove; any detection at the intake triggers weekly paired raw and treated-water testing until two clean weeks, and carbon, ozone or chlorine destroys the toxin in nearly every case. The ten-day advisory levels for treated water are 0.3 µg/L for children under six and 1.6 µg/L for everyone else. Since November 2022 the bloom season runs June through November (sampling continues into early December), with treated water tested every two weeks the rest of the year; the 2016 to 2022 rule monitored year-round and stepped testing up to three days a week when raw water passed 5 µg/L.

Source: Ohio EPA public water system harmful algal bloom monitoring (HAB data and map, DrinkingWater/HAB service, fetched 2026-09-09), total microcystins by ELISA in raw and treated water, for the system that serves most of this ZIP · Ohio EPA HAB information for public water systems

Groundwater

Under the surface

glacial till (clay-rich, poor yields), part of the E Delaware Thin Upland Aquifer (thin upland setting); wells there yield < 5 gallons a minute, deposits < 25 ft thick

Bedrock

Ohio and Olentangy Shales, yielding 0 - 5 gpm to a well

Setting

Shale; water table 30-50 ft down, 2-4 in/yr recharge, clay loam soil (hydrogeologic setting 7Ae); pesticide index 107

Well logs

634 drilled wells on file (43.4 per 1,000 residents), median 70 ft deep, 10 gallons a minute median test yield, water 15 ft down

Aquifers

74% of wells in bedrock, 26% in sand, gravel and other unconsolidated material; typical well drilled 1971, 96 since 2000; uses: Domestic 414, Agric/Irrig 57

Geology

64% of the ZIP is a sensitive geologic setting, where thin or sandy cover leaves the aquifer open to what soaks in from the surface; nearest verified sinkhole 7.7 mi away (Ohio EPA and ODNR Geological Survey)

Injection wells

3 Class V injection wells on Ohio EPA's books inside this ZIP (2 active): 2 large septic, 1 vehicle waste; these put fluids underground above or into drinking water aquifers

Water table

FR-523 AT NGWA monitoring well (USGS), 7.8 mi away: water 20.9 ft below ground on 2026-09-08; averaged 20.5 ft in 2015 to 2019 and 21.4 ft over the latest year, so the table is running about 0.9 ft lower; range 18 to 23.2 ft over 4,245 readings since 2015

Nitrate risk

EPA researchers put the chance that a public water system in the Hoover Reservoir-Big Walnut Creek subwatershed exceeds the nitrate limit at 20% if it draws on groundwater and 56% if it draws on rivers or lakes, judged from land use, geology and past results (EnviroAtlas nitrate violation index; the typical Ohio subwatershed scores 23% for groundwater and 39% for surface water)

Quality monitoring

Ohio EPA's nearest ambient groundwater monitoring well is Fancher Road (Licking County), 10.1 mi away: 56 ft deep in sand and gravel (Johnstown Groveport aquifer); wells there yield 5 to 25 gallons a minute; not currently sampled. 3 active wells within 15 mi

Vulnerability rates how easily a spill at the surface reaches the aquifer, not whether anything has. Well logs include abandoned and replaced wells, so counts overstate wells in use; a private well owner is the only one who tests it.

Source: ODNR Division of Geological Survey, Groundwater Vulnerability (DRASTIC) map (polygon at the ZIP's population-weighted center), karst feature inventory, and the Ohio water well log database (logs inside the ZIP boundary) · ODNR Geological Survey · Ohio EPA GIS services · USGS water data

Aquifer exposure

Karst

no karst-prone bedrock under the population center; no mapped sinkhole inside the ZIP; nearest verified sinkhole 7.7 mi from the center

Wellhead protection

less than half a percent of this ZIP lies inside any public water system's five-year wellhead protection area

River intakes

41% in the 1,000-foot stream corridor zone

Vulnerability index

DRASTIC 86 (ODNR; higher means a spill at the surface reaches the aquifer more easily)

Sensitive settings are outwash plains, buried valleys, karst and shallow bedrock, mapped statewide by Ohio EPA for siting decisions. Exposure is not contamination: it says how quickly a spill, a failing tank or heavy manure would reach the water table, not whether one has.

Source: Ohio EPA Sensitive Geologic Settings and karst geology layers (geology/Geology), ODNR Geological Survey karst and spring points, Ohio EPA source water protection areas (DrinkingWater/SWAP); shares by ZIP boundary overlay, karst by a point query at the population-weighted center · Ohio EPA geology layers · Ohio EPA source water protection (SWAP) · ODNR Geological Survey

Sewage treatment

Size

0.5 million gallons a day design flow

Compliance

1 of the last 12 quarters with a violation; no open violation; 1 effluent limit exceedance in 3 years

Other discharge permits: 2 facilities inside this ZIP other than sewage plants hold a Clean Water Act permit (factories, water plants, quarries, package plants, storm water); 1 in significant noncompliance; 22 facility-quarters with a violation in the last three years; largest: Hylen Souders Elem Sch (in significant noncompliance); Royal American Links Golf (0.015 MGD).

Sewage sludge: 3 farm fields covering 75 acres inside this ZIP are permitted for spreading treated biosolids, mostly from Sunbury Wwtp (75 acres) (Ohio EPA). Biosolids carry nutrients and, increasingly under scrutiny, PFAS.

Sludge source: nearest Sunbury WWTP, 3 mi away; 6 within 10 miles (Ohio EPA).

State water loans: no Ohio EPA revolving-fund project inside this ZIP; the nearest is Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrades and Associated Improveme (Sunbury, 2021, $325,000), 3.1 mi away.

Sewer planning: this ZIP falls in the Delaware County Regional Sewer District FPA; 67% of it is assigned to Delaware County as the designated sewage management agency under Ohio's Clean Water Act section 208 plan (generic prescriptions); 6 agencies share the ZIP. The 208 plan decides who may build and extend sewers.

Stormwater: 16% of this ZIP lies inside Ohio EPA's regulated MS4 areas, mostly the Genoa Township storm sewer system (6 permit holders overlap the ZIP); the towns, townships and counties that own those storm sewers hold a stormwater permit and must control what runs off streets and parking lots (2020 to 2030 designation).

Plants inside this ZIP: Galena Wwtp No 2 (0.5 MGD).

Where a home's sewage actually goes depends on the sewer district, and rural homes are on septic systems the county health department permits; the nearest plant is a proxy. Violations range from paperwork to raw discharges.

Source: EPA Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO), Clean Water Act NPDES facilities with a POTW component in Ohio; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center. Compliance data lag about a quarter.; other Clean Water Act permit holders inside the ZIP from the same service · EPA ECHO · EPA CSO inventory · Ohio EPA GIS services · EPA Facility Finder

Stream health

Uses failing

aquatic life 35% of the land, recreation (bacteria) 17%, fish consumption 0%, drinking-water source 0% (that use is assessed on only 74% of the ZIP)

Causes listed

habitat damage (35%), altered hydrology (35%), sediment and silt (32%)

Cleanup plans

35% of the land is under a TMDL pollution budget

Watersheds here: Hoover Reservoir-Big Walnut Creek (fully supporting); Alum Creek Dam-Alum Creek (fully supporting).

Fish advisories (Ohio EPA): Alum Creek Lake: pumpkinseed sunfish one meal a week, channel catfish two meals a week, saugeye two meals a week and 1 more species (arsenic, mercury). Statewide, every other fish is one meal a week because of mercury.

Nearest stream assessment (Ohio EPA): Mccammon Creek Dst. Bale Kenyon Rd. on the Mccammon Creek, 3.9 mi away, draining 1 square mile: full attainment of its warmwater use; fish IBI 52 of 60 (2022); bugs rated good; habitat QHEI 65.5 of 100. 0 within 3 miles, 7 within 10. Scores above about 40 (IBI), 36 (ICI) and 60 (QHEI) mean a healthy warmwater stream.

Stream designations (Ohio EPA water quality standards): 12.9 miles of designated streams cross this ZIP: 12.9 mi warmwater habitat. Nearest specially protected stream: the Olentangy river (Delaware dam (RM 32.35) to Old Wilson Bridge road (RM 11.45)), 7.4 mi away, an Outstanding State Water. Exceptional and coldwater streams are the state's healthiest; modified and limited-resource waters are channelized or ditched.

Proposed for 2026: the nearest reach Ohio EPA proposes to add to the antidegradation tiers is the Scioto River (Mill creek above O'Shaughnessy reservoir (RM 155.4) to the mouth), 12 mi away, as Outstanding State Water for recreation.

PFAS in the river (Ohio EPA large river survey): at Scioto R. N Of Dublin @ I-270, 12.7 mi away, the water carried 77.21 ng/L of total PFAS (PFOA 3.8, PFOS 2 ng/L); fish fillets held 37.2 ng/g in bluegill and 19.12 ng/g in catfish (PFOS 14 in bluegill). Drinking water limits are 4 ng/L for PFOA and PFOS; river water is not drinking water, but treatment plants that draw from it start from these numbers.

Farm chemicals (USGS estimate, 2018): farms in Delaware County used about 145 metric tons of pesticide active ingredient, 316 kg per square mile, 37th of Ohio's 88 counties. Largest: glyphosate 57 t, metolachlor 17 t, atrazine 17 t, acetochlor 7 t, 2,4-D 5 t. Atrazine, the corn herbicide, is the pesticide that most often shows up in Ohio tap water after spring rains; this county used 17 t of it.

Farms (2022 Census of Agriculture): 728 farms work 130,937 acres of Delaware County, with 39.8% of its land in cropland, 180 acres to a farm. 2,157 cattle, 22,126 hogs, 4,349 laying hens, 439 broilers, 21 turkeys; 29,900 acres of corn and 72,838 of soybeans. Sales $133 million, 12% from animals and animal products. Manure and fertilizer from farms like these carry the phosphorus and nitrogen behind Ohio's algae and nitrate problems; withheld figures protect individual farms.

A watershed unit fails when any sampled stream in it fails; ditches in flat farm country fail on habitat and nutrients, city creeks on bacteria and sediment. Ohio's own report is at epa.ohio.gov; the EPA link on each unit's report page has the sampling detail.

Source: EPA ATTAINS (Ohio EPA 2024 Integrated Report), watershed assessment units overlaid on the ZIP boundary in an equal-area projection; shares are of the ZIP's land area · EPA ATTAINS · Ohio integrated report · Ohio sport fish advisory · Ohio EPA advisory map

Watershed

• Upper Scioto100% of residentsDrains to the Ohio River

H2Ohio: 1 state water-quality project inside this ZIP (Big Walnut Creek Wetland and Floodplain Restoration); nearest Big Walnut Creek Wetland and Floodplain Restoration, funded 2024, in progress, 2.8 mi away: The Big Walnut Creek Wetland and Floodplain Restoration project aims to restore approximately 26 acres of land along Big Walnut Creek. This restoration will imp...; 1 within 5 miles, 4 within 15. H2Ohio pays for wetlands, farm practices and lead line work to cut the nutrients behind Lake Erie's algae.

Source water: 100% of this ZIP drains to the river intakes of Columbus Public Water System, Westerville City PWS, Del-Co Water Company, Inc. and sits inside their Ohio EPA source water protection area; 41% lies in the 1,000-foot stream corridor zone where spills and runoff matter most.

Watershed grants: 1 state or federal runoff project inside this ZIP (1 SWIF); nearest "Hoover Nature Preserve Innovative Stormwater Development Project" by Columbus Public Utilities Department (stormwater management, SWIF), 1.6 mi away; 11 within 10 miles (Ohio EPA project lists: Section 319 and GLRI through fiscal 2023, SWIF through 2017).

Road salt: nearest went to City of Westerville (equipment, 2024-2025), 6.1 mi away; 2 in Delaware County. H2Ohio pays for brine makers, calibrated spreaders and covered salt barns so less chloride reaches streams and wells.

The population center sits in the Hoover Reservoir-Big Walnut Creek subwatershed; its water runs on through City of Gahanna-Big Walnut Creek, then Mason Run-Big Walnut Creek, then Town of Lockbourne-Big Walnut Creek.

In 2015 Delaware County drew about 24 million gallons a day of fresh water (USGS): 19.7 million for public supply (11% from wells, 182,400 people served at 81 gallons a person a day at home), 1.2 million for irrigation, 2.1 million for mining; 10,600 residents drew their own well water.

EnviroAtlas, Hoover Reservoir-Big Walnut Creek: 50 to 100 acres in the Conservation Reserve Program; 5,592 acres of grain crops; 43 miles of streams (1.4 per square mile); water use of 747 thousand gallons a day for homes and 87 thousand for farms; 39.3 inches of rain and snow a year; 10.7 kg of nitrogen per hectare falling from the air each year; farm nitrogen of 0 kg per hectare a year as manure and 22.7 kg as synthetic fertilizer; 13% of the farmland sits on drained hydric soils; potentially restorable wetlands on farmland cover 19% of the subwatershed; 4.9% of the land is paved or roofed; 62% of the stream banks keep natural cover (EPA EnviroAtlas national metrics, 2010s vintages).

Stream permits: none of this ZIP drains to streams Ohio EPA rates high quality, where a project that fills, pipes or crosses a stream needs an individual Ohio EPA 401 water quality review; 3% drains toward high-quality waters farther down and might qualify for the Army Corps' blanket nationwide permits after a field screening and 97% can use those nationwide permits outright (Ohio EPA 401 nationwide permit eligibility map).

Source: USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset (HUC-8 subbasins by resident share, HUC-12 subwatershed at the population center) · 2020 census blocks · USGS watershed boundaries · EPA EnviroAtlas · Ohio EPA 401 map · USGS county water use 2015 · ODNR H2Ohio projects · ODNR Lake Erie Coastal Management Area · Ohio EPA source water protection (SWAP) · Ohio EPA nine-element plans · Ohio EPA 319, GLRI and SWIF project lists · Ohio EPA chloride reduction grants · NOAA Lake Erie water levels

Homes and income

Household income

$167,941 median

Income spread

3% of households earn under $25,000 a year, 74% $100,000 or more and 41% $200,000 or more

Rent

$1,364 a month, median gross

Owner-occupied

94% of 4,710 occupied homes; 77% of owners carry a mortgage

Typical home built

2003

Value spread

2% of owner-occupied homes are worth under $100,000 and 61% $500,000 or more; income per person $69,246 a year

Moved in

the typical owner moved in in 2013, the typical renter in 2015

Median age

41.3 years

Commute

25 minutes each way on average, 11% of commuters travel 45 minutes or more, 23% work from home

Housing stock

99% single-family detached, 0% in buildings of 5 or more units, 0.1% mobile homes

Vacancy

3.5% of 4,882 housing units are vacant: 1.4% for rent, 1.9% other, such as homes held off the market, in probate or abandoned

Owner costs

26% of owners with a mortgage and 4% of owners without one spend 30% or more of income on housing

Evictions

3.67 eviction filings a year per 100 renter households in 2016 to 2018, 1.84 ending in a judgement (about 12 filings a year; Eviction Lab)

Fair market rent

$1,520 a month for a two-bedroom (one-bedroom $1,270, three-bedroom $1,820): HUD's fiscal 2026 small-area fair market rent, the benchmark for housing vouchers in the Columbus metro area

Tax returns

7,310 returns for 2022 averaging $179,818 of adjusted gross income; 20% reported under $25,000 and 26% reported $200,000 or more; 3% claimed the earned income credit and 27% were filed by people 60 or older (IRS)

Subsidized housing

no public housing, tax-credit or HUD-assisted multifamily property inside this ZIP

Banks

no bank branch inside this ZIP; the nearest, First Commonwealth Bank, is 3.5 mi from its center (FDIC); no credit union branch (NCUA)

Strain

16% of renters pay 30% or more of income in rent; 1.4% of households have no vehicle; the median renter spends 14.1% of income on rent; the median owner with a mortgage spends 19.3% of income on housing costs

Five-year survey averages centered on 2022; small ZIPs carry wide margins of error, and owner-estimated values run below sale prices in a rising market.

Source: Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020 to 2024 five-year estimates by ZIP Code Tabulation Area; Eviction Lab (Princeton) tract estimates 2016 to 2018, weighted to the ZIP; HUD fiscal 2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents; IRS Statistics of Income ZIP data, tax year 2022; Mapping Inequality (University of Richmond), HOLC maps 1935 to 1940; HUD eGIS open data for subsidized housing; FDIC BankFind branch locations; NCUA credit union branch list, March 2026 · Census ACS · Eviction Lab · HUD data · IRS ZIP statistics · Mapping Inequality · HUD eGIS open data · FDIC BankFind · NCUA call report data

Houses and neighborhoods

Homes

5,096 one-family houses, 6 two-family houses, 2 three-family houses, 191 condominiums, 1 manufactured home; also 85 other residential parcels

Lot

median 0.57 acres (condominiums left out)

The atlas has only the parcel list here so far: 5,296 homes with address, land-use class, lot size and, where the county's upload carries one, a link to each parcel's page at the county auditor, from OGRIP's Ohio Statewide Parcels (Delaware County; upload of Nov 13, 2023). Year built, size, values and sales come from each county auditor's own appraisal records, which are being added county by county outward from Franklin County. The Delaware County Auditor's site shows each parcel's full record.

Show neighborhoods and houses

The houses load when you search, pick a filter or press the button (the pack for this part of the state, a few megabytes). Zoomed in on the map, each house of this ZIP draws as a dot that follows the search and filters.

Source: OGRIP Ohio Statewide Parcels, Ohio Department of Administrative Services (Delaware County, upload of Nov 13, 2023); residential parcels placed in ZIPs by the atlas; owner names are not carried · Allen County Auditor · Ashland County Auditor · Auglaize County Auditor · Butler County Auditor · Champaign County Auditor · Clark County Auditor · Clinton County Auditor · Coshocton County Auditor · Crawford County Auditor · Fairfield County Auditor · Fayette County Auditor · Franklin County Auditor · Greene County Auditor · Guernsey County Auditor · Hardin County Auditor · Highland County Auditor · Hocking County Auditor · Holmes County Auditor · Jackson County Auditor · Knox County Auditor · Licking County Auditor · Logan County Auditor · Lorain County Auditor · Madison County Auditor · Marion County Auditor · Miami County Auditor · Montgomery County Auditor · Morrow County Auditor · Muskingum County Auditor · Perry County Auditor · Pickaway County Auditor · Richland County Auditor · Ross County Auditor · Stark County Auditor · Tuscarawas County Auditor · Union County Auditor · Wyandot County Auditor · OGRIP Ohio Statewide Parcels · Athens County subdivisions, town plats and additions (Athens County Auditor GIS) · Cincinnati Community Council Boundaries · Cincinnati Statistical Neighborhood Approximations (SNA), 2020 · Clark County recorded subdivision plats · Clermont County recorded subdivision plats · Cleveland Heights neighborhoods · Cleveland Statistical Planning Areas (SPAs) / neighborhoods · Columbus Communities · Columbus Community Planning Areas · Coshocton County subdivisions (recorded plats and town additions) · Dayton neighborhoods · Dublin Civic Associations · Franklin County recorded subdivision and condominium plats · Hamilton (Ohio) 17Strong neighborhoods · Lima neighborhood associations · Logan County subdivision and condominium plats · Madison County subdivisions (recorded plats) · Morgan County subdivision, addition and town plats · Muskingum County subdivision plats · Perry County subdivisions and town additions (recorded plat names on the county engineer's parcels) · Richland County subdivisions and condominiums (recorded plats, county GIS) · Sandusky neighborhoods · Stark County recorded allotment (subdivision) and condominium plats · Toledo neighborhood associations · Union County subdivision plats

Building permits

Mix

10,242 single-family houses, 1,422 units in buildings of five or more, 70 in duplexes and small buildings

Value

$3.8 billion of construction at the value declared on the permits

By year

2016: 836, 2017: 933, 2018: 762, 2019: 985, 2020: 1,212, 2021: 1,613, 2022: 1,151, 2023: 1,045, 2024: 1,703, 2025: 1,494, 2026 through July: 970

Survey counts are permits issued, not houses finished, and cover new residential construction only: additions, remodels, garages and commercial buildings are not in the survey. Values are the applicants' estimates. Where a city runs the building department for its township neighbours, the city's figure covers them too.

Source: Census Bureau Building Permits Survey, annual place files 2016 to 2025 (new privately owned residential units authorized), for the permit-issuing jurisdiction where most of this ZIP's residents live · Census building permits

Home prices

Five years

+66% from 2020 to 2025

Last year

+8% in 2025

Since 2000

prices stand at 2.6 times their 2000 level

Series

tracked since 1985

Zillow's typical home value here is $652K (2026-07), up 1% over the year, up 26% over five years and up 70% over ten.

On the market (Realtor.com, August 2026): median asking price $675,000 (down 0.7% in a year), $223 per square foot for a typical 3,651 sq ft listing; 33 active listings, 16 new this month; listings spend a median 36 days on the market (down 16% from a year earlier); 39% of listings have cut their price.

The index follows the same houses through repeat sales and refinance appraisals on conforming mortgages, so it measures price change rather than the price level (the Homes card has the median value). Consumer prices rose about 36% from 2015 to 2025, so a gain under 36% is a loss in real terms.

Source: Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index, annual five-digit ZIP all-transactions series (repeat sales and refinance appraisals of conforming-mortgage homes, developmental, not seasonally adjusted), latest release; Zillow Home Value Index (mid-tier, smoothed, seasonally adjusted) and Zillow Observed Rent Index by ZIP, Zillow Research · FHFA house price index · Zillow research data · Realtor.com data

Local taxes

Olentangy Local 53% of residents

43.3 effective mills (90.7 gross); $3,030 a year on a $200,000 home. Operating 31.4, bonds 6.0, improvements 0.9, inside millage 5.0.

Big Walnut Local 47% of residents

29.6 effective mills (38.7 gross); $2,075 a year on a $200,000 home. Operating 15.4, bonds 5.4, improvements 0.7, substitute 3.5, inside millage 4.6.

Municipal income tax

Galena 1% (6% of residents); township residents outside a city or village pay none. Charged on wages and business profits where you work and, after credits, where you live.

School district income tax

Olentangy Local none (53% of residents), Big Walnut Local 0.75% (47% of residents). Voted by the district and collected with the state income tax.

Sales tax

7% combined rate in Delaware County: Ohio's 5.75% plus county and transit levies.

A mill is $1 per $1,000 of taxable value, and taxable value is 35% of market value. Effective rates fall as values rise because Ohio holds most voted levies to the dollars first approved. County, municipal or township, library, park and vocational-school levies are added on the same bill and are not counted here.

Source: Ohio Department of Taxation, Aggregate Property Tax Rates by School District, tax year 2025 (composite DTE 515); weighted by the share of this ZIP's residents in each district; The Finder rate tables for municipal, school district and sales taxes, September 2026 · Ohio tax data series · The Finder

Who delivers the electricity

• AEP Ohio investor-owned98% of residentsAmerican Electric Power (AEP)

AEP Ohio outages, 2024: the average customer lost power for 272 minutes (158 minutes leaving out major storm days), about 1.1 interruptions a year.

AEP Ohio standard service offer price, 2024: 19.33 cents per kWh, about $174 a month for the average home, for the 550,768 residential customers who have not chosen a supplier; the other 788,464 pay AEP Ohio 10.75 cents per kWh for delivery plus their supplier's price (EIA-861).

AEP Ohio solar and meters, 2024: 11,606 customers run net-metered solar (158.9 MW, 11,036 of them homes); 79% of its 1,541,883 meters are two-way smart (AMI) meters, 21% drive-by automated reads (EIA-861).

Energy burden: households here spend an average 1.7% of income on electricity, gas and other fuels (about $3,116 a year against $182,167 of income); the 15% of households below 80% of the area median income spend 7.1%, and 9% of households fall in groups averaging 6% or more, the usual line for a high burden (DOE LEAD Tool, 2022 update, built from 2018 to 2022 survey data).

Source: PUCO certified territories via ODOT · HIFLD retail service territories (EIA Form 861) · 2020 census blocks · outage statistics from EIA-861 Reliability, 2024 with 2023 where a utility skipped a year (SAIDI and SAIFI, IEEE 1366) · residential prices from EIA-861 Sales to Ultimate Customers, net metering and advanced meters from the EIA-861 files of the same years · DOE LEAD Tool 2022 household energy burden by tract, apportioned into ZIPs by block population · PUCO electricity · ODOT territories service · EIA-861 · DOE LEAD Tool · HIFLD retail service territories

Natural gas here

69% of the 4,710 homes here heat with utility gas.

Utility gas 69%Electricity 19%Propane or LP 10%Oil, wood, other 3%

• Columbia Gas of Ohio regulated utility100% of residents, main companyNiSource Inc.

Pipes under the street: Columbia Gas of Ohio reported 20,620 miles of distribution main to PHMSA for 2025, 64% plastic and 6.6% cast iron or bare steel (the leak-prone materials); 3,271 hazardous leaks repaired in 2025.

PUCO lists 5 companies operating in Delaware County: Bright Energy (Consolidated Cooperative), Columbia Gas of Ohio, Knox Energy Cooperative Association, Inc., Madison Energy Cooperative Association, Inc., Suburban Natural Gas Company.

Source: PUCO gas distribution companies by county, April 2026 · federal (EIA) territory polygons, 2016 · Census ACS 2020 to 2024 heating fuel · PUCO natural gas · HIFLD

Power plants

Nearest plant of any size: O'Shaughnessy Hydro, 12.1 mi (hydro, 5 MW).

0 plants within 10 miles totalling 0 MW.

Capacity is net summer capacity in megawatts (EIA), not output; a solar farm's 200 MW runs a quarter of the hours a gas plant's would. Small peaking engines and landfill-gas units count as plants.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration Form 860 plant inventory via HIFLD (February 2025); USGS U.S. Wind Turbine Database and U.S. Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Database; NRC emergency planning zones around Perry and Davis-Besse (residents inside the roughly 10-mile zone counted by 2020 census block); straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center · EIA-860 · HIFLD · USGS wind turbines · USGS solar · NRC emergency planning zones

Gas transmission pipelines

No transmission line crosses this ZIP.

Transmission lines run at hundreds of pounds of pressure and are inspected under federal rules; the distribution mains that actually feed homes are a separate, denser network not shown here. By mileage in this EIA layer Ohio's map is dominated by Columbia Gas Transmission and East Ohio Gas's intrastate lines; Texas Eastern and the Rover and Nexus lines built for Utica shale gas are among the other large interstate systems.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration Natural Gas Interstate and Intrastate Pipelines layer (data last updated July 2025, pulled September 2026), via the ArcGIS Online copy maintained by Esri's Federal User Community; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center; lengths clipped to the ZIP boundary in an equal-area projection · EIA U.S. Energy Atlas · ArcGIS Online item

Incumbent telephone company

• Brightspeed51% of residentsBrightspeed (formerly CenturyLink)
• Frontier North46% of residentsFrontier
• AT&T Ohio3% of residentsIncumbent local exchange carrier

ZIP codes and exchange areas do not share boundaries, so this ZIP is split between them.

Source: PUCO incumbent local exchange carrier service areas · 2020 census blocks · PUCO telephone

Internet

Served, 100/20 Mbps or better 99%Underserved, 25/3 to 100/20 0%Unserved, under 25/3 0%

Fiber reaches 3% of locations, cable 98%; a year earlier 99% were served.

Of 4,710 households, 89% subscribe to cable, fiber or DSL, 6% rely on a cellular plan only, and 2% have no internet at home.

Measured by Ookla speed tests, April to June 2025: typical fixed download 303.4 Mbps, upload 37.9 Mbps, 21 ms latency, across 978 tests from up to 356 devices in 165 map tiles.

Source: FCC Broadband Data Collection, June 2024 (availability) · Census ACS 2020 to 2024 (subscriptions) · Ookla Open Data, fixed-network speed tests by tile, 2025 Q2 (measured speeds) · FCC broadband map · Ookla open data · Census ACS

Cell signal

• AT&T4G 100% · 5G 100%
• T-Mobile4G 99% · 5G 89%
• Verizon4G 100% · 5G 86%

Registered towers: 6 antenna structures registered with the FCC inside this ZIP and 5 within 3 miles of its center; the tallest inside is a 499-foot guyed tower. Only structures over 200 feet or near airports must register, so most cell sites on short poles, water towers and rooftops are not counted.

Measured mobile speeds (Ookla speed tests, April to June 2026): typical download 338.9 Mbps, upload 23.6 Mbps, latency 28 ms over 55 tests from up to 29 devices in 26 map tiles.

Coverage as the carriers report it to the FCC for outdoor use at a stationary spot, by land area rather than by residents; indoor signal and rural hollows can be worse.

Source: FCC Mobile Broadband Data Collection via Esri Living Atlas (layer last updated November 2025, i.e. the June 30, 2025 filing round), carrier-reported outdoor coverage by hexagon, summed over the ZIP's land; FCC Antenna Structure Registration database, September 2026; Ookla open data mobile tiles, 2026 Q2 · FCC broadband map · FCC antenna registration · Ookla open data

EV charging

1 public station inside this ZIP with 6 Level 2 and 0 DC fast ports; the nearest of any kind is MORNING STREET CHURCH PARKING, 3.7 mi. 7 stations within 5 miles of the ZIP's population center, 3 with DC fast charging.

Networks here: Loop (1).

Level 2 adds roughly 20 to 30 miles of range an hour; DC fast charging fills most cars in under an hour. Listings are operator-reported and lag new openings and closures.

Source: NREL Alternative Fuels Data Center via the U.S. DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics (public, open electric stations, the posts at one site merged, restricted-access sites excluded), and chargers in neighbouring states near the border; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center; station list as of May 29, 2026 · Alternative Fuels Data Center · BTS Alternative Fueling Stations (NTAD)

Public transit

0 stops inside this ZIP; the nearest stop is 4 mi from the population center.

Only fixed-route systems that publish a GTFS feed appear; dial-a-ride and demand-response services do not, and a handful of small fixed-route systems publish no feed at all. The nearest stop may be across the state line, and the out-of-state set may be incomplete. Half a mile is roughly a ten-minute walk.

Source: USDOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transit Map stops (National Transportation Atlas Database, 2025 vintage, fetched September 2026), plus the Springfield, Lancaster-Fairfield, Knox County Transit, WayGo and BGSU Shuttle GTFS feeds; share of 2020 census block population within half a mile of a stop · BTS National Transit Map · BTS transportation atlas · Springfield City Area Transit GTFS feed · Lancaster-Fairfield Public Transit GTFS feed · Knox County Transit GTFS feed · WayGo GTFS feed · BGSU Shuttle GTFS feed

Walkability

Street grid

13 intersections per square mile, long blocks and country roads

Transit

no stop within three-quarters of a mile in the EPA's 2020 transit file

Mix of uses

employment mix 0.66 and mix of homes and job types 0.51 on the EPA's 0 to 1 scales, where 1 is the most varied

Car-free households

1.4% of households have no vehicle (Census ACS 2020 to 2024)

The index scores every block group on intersection density, distance to transit and how mixed its jobs and homes are, then ranks them against the whole country. It measures the street pattern, not sidewalks, safety or hills.

Source: EPA National Walkability Index (Smart Location Database 3.0, 2021) by census block group, population-weighted to the ZIP through 2020 census blocks; car-free households from Census ACS 2020 to 2024 table B25044 (the Homes card), or, where that is missing, the Smart Location Database's own 2014 to 2018 share weighted by households · EPA walkability index · Smart Location Database · Census ACS

Rail crossings

Delaware County has logged 3 rail accidents since 2010, 3 of them derailments (FRA Form 54). Yard mishaps at walking speed dominate; main-line derailments are the rare, dangerous ones.

Train counts and speeds are the railroad's last inventory update. Crossings with only crossbucks rely on the driver; Ohio has averaged about 77 crossing collisions a year from 2010 to 2025 (FRA Form 57), between 64 and 87 in a year.

Source: Federal Railroad Administration, Grade Crossing Inventory (Form 71, current records); crossings whose point falls inside the ZIP boundary, closed crossings excluded; nearest crossing measured from the population-weighted center. Collisions are FRA Form 57 crossing incidents since 2010, placed by crossing id through the inventory's coordinates; train accidents are FRA Form 54 rail equipment accidents since 2010, placed by their own reported coordinates, counted one per incident rather than one per report (county totals from the same file). All three pulled from data.transportation.gov, September 2026 · FRA crossing inventory (Form 71, current) · FRA crossing incidents (Form 57) · FRA rail equipment accidents (Form 54) · FRA safety data · DOT open data

Bridges

Age

typical bridge built 1959; oldest 1950, Overbrook Ln. over Red Bank Creek

Busiest

I-71 SB over CR 21 (Africa Rd.), 41,597 vehicles a day (2015 count)

Owners

county 17, state 12

Ratings come from the inspection every bridge gets at least every two years; poor means deterioration that needs repair, not imminent danger. FHWA's file is a yearly snapshot with inspections through early 2025, so a bridge replaced, re-rated or closed since then still shows its old rating here; ODOT's TIMS bridge inventory carries the current one. Traffic figures are the average daily counts the bridge owners filed with the inventory; most Ohio counts date from 2015 and some are older. County engineers own most of Ohio's small bridges and ODOT the big ones.

Source: Federal Highway Administration, National Bridge Inventory 2025 (Ohio file); structures whose point falls inside the ZIP boundary; condition from NBI items 58, 59, 60 and 62 (deck, superstructure, substructure, culvert) · FHWA bridge inventory · ODOT TIMS bridge inventory (live)

Traffic

Trucks

23,240 a day on I-71, 26% of its traffic

Driving

about 766K vehicle-miles a day on the 165 counted segments inside the ZIP; the typical segment carries 3,100 vehicles

Freeway volumes

7 segments carry 50,000 or more a day

Busiest local road

county road 13, 22,165 vehicles a day

Annual average daily traffic is both directions combined, averaged over the year. County, township and city roads are labelled by their route number, which ODOT uses instead of the street name. Most city streets have no count, so the busiest local road is the busiest counted one. Interchange ramps are left out of the busiest-road pick; a ZIP with nothing but ramps shows one labelled ramp and its ODOT number.

Road deaths: 14 people died in 10 crashes inside this ZIP in 2020 to 2024 (1 motorcyclist); 4 involved a drinking driver and 5 happened in the dark; most on SR-3 (3). That is 19.1 deaths a year per 100,000 residents against 10.6 across Ohio's ZIPs; deaths are counted where the crash happened, and many who die live elsewhere. (NHTSA FARS)

Source: ODOT traffic count segments, 2025 annual average daily traffic (ODOT TIMS); segments assigned to the ZIP holding their midpoint; NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System 2020 to 2024, crashes placed by their coordinates · ODOT TIMS traffic count segments · NHTSA FARS

Airports and trains

Nearest airfield

Chapman Memorial Field (6CM), Centerburg, 11.2 mi, public use

Amtrak

Sandusky station, 85.8 mi

Ohio's Amtrak stops are on the Floridian (Amtrak has temporarily combined the Capitol Limited with the Silver Star), the Lake Shore Limited and the Cardinal, all overnight trains; Cincinnati's only calls three times a week. Amtrak's Thruway bus stops, Dayton-Trotwood among them, are not counted as stations here. Airline service at Toledo and Rickenbacker is limited to a few routes; Youngstown-Warren has had no airline flights since 2018.

Source: FAA airport facilities and Amtrak stations via USDOT BTS National Transportation Atlas; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center · BTS transportation atlas

Radon in this ZIP

54% of tests at or above EPA's 4 pCi/L action level · median 4.4 · highest 66.6

A ZIP average says nothing about one house; readings next door can differ tenfold. Test yours, and fix it at 4 pCi/L or more.

Source: odh.ohio.gov radon levels by ZIP code, tests since 2010, before mitigation · ODH radon program

Flood zones

5.3% of the ZIP's land is in that floodplain, and another 0.2% is in the 0.2% (500-year) zone. Zones mapped here: A, AE.

Design storms (NOAA Atlas 14): a 100-year storm here drops 5.6 inches in 24 hours (2.8 in a single hour, 4.3 in six); a 2-year storm 2.6, 10-year 3.7, 25-year 4.4, 500-year 7.1 inches in 24 hours. Storm sewers, culverts and detention ponds are sized from these numbers, and a "100-year" storm has a 1% chance every year.

Nearest river gauge: Alum Creek at Africa OH, 3.3 mi away, draining 122 square miles. Record flow 6,460 cubic feet a second at a stage of 14.2 ft on 1963-03-05; the highest since 2016 was 1,780 on 2021-05-12 (USGS, 55 annual peaks, 1963 to 2025).

22 federal flood insurance policies are in force in this ZIP, covering $5.2 million of buildings; 14% of them are in a mapped high-risk zone; the typical policy costs $869 a year (about 1% of households).

2 federal flood insurance claims from this ZIP since 1978, 0 since 2010, with no recorded payment; the worst year was 1979 with 1 claim.

Community status: Galena takes part in the National Flood Insurance Program; flood map effective 04/16/09. Delaware County's unincorporated areas take part in the National Flood Insurance Program; flood map effective 12/21/23.

Lenders require flood insurance on mortgaged homes in the 1% zone (zones A and AE). Block centers understate narrow floodplains in rural areas, so check the FEMA map for a specific address.

Source: FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer (effective flood insurance rate maps, levee centerlines) · 2020 census block centers · ZIP land area by polygon overlay, open water excluded; NOAA Atlas 14 precipitation frequency at the ZIP center; USGS NWIS annual peak flows; OpenFEMA NFIP policies in force by reported ZIP as of September 2026, NFIP redacted claims and the Community Status Book · FEMA flood hazard layer · FEMA Map Service Center · OpenFEMA · NOAA Atlas 14 · USGS stream gauges

Natural hazard risk

• Ice storm81
• Hail80

FEMA's expected annual loss here from all hazards: $4.9 million a year in buildings, crops and lives.

The index blends how often a hazard strikes, what it would cost, and how vulnerable and resilient the community is. Inland flooding (rivers and heavy rain) scores 64, tornado 61, winter weather 79.

Source: FEMA National Risk Index, census tracts, December 2025 release, weighted to this ZIP by 2020 block population · FEMA National Risk Index · NRI census tract layer (ArcGIS)

Climate

Temperature

53.9°F average; typical January low 22°, July high 86°

Hot and cold days

20 days a year reach 90°F; 110 nights fall below freezing, 4 below 0°F; 27 days never climb above freezing

Rain and snow

42.2 inches of precipitation on 86 days with a tenth of an inch or more; 19 inches of snow on 7 days with an inch or more, snow on the ground 26 days

Degree days

5,108 heating, 1,096 cooling (base 65°F): the higher the heating number, the bigger the winter gas bill

Drought (U.S. Drought Monitor): since 2020 Delaware County has spent 22 weeks in moderate drought or worse, 5 of them severe or worse (most recently 5 weeks in 2024), and 85 weeks at least abnormally dry. The worst since 2000 was severe drought in 2024/11; 4% of all weeks since 2000 were in drought. As of 2026-09-01: no drought.

Long run (NOAA, Delaware County): the average year ran 52.2 °F over 1996 to 2025 against 50.5 °F over 1901 to 1930, 1.7 °F warmer (1.7 °F warmer than 1951 to 1980); the warmest year on record was 2024 at 55.2 °F, and 2025 came in at 51.9 °F. Precipitation averaged 41.1 inches a year lately against 38.7 a century ago, 6% more; the wettest year was 2011 with 55.1 inches, and 2025 brought 35.9. More rain in bigger bursts is what strains storm sewers and septic fields.

Stations: Westerville (5.9 mi, temperature and precipitation and snowfall; 26 years of snowfall record). Normals are thirty-year averages, so a single winter can run far above or below them.

Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020 (annual/seasonal and monthly); nearest reporting station to the ZIP's population-weighted center for each element; U.S. Drought Monitor county statistics · NOAA climate normals · NOAA climate at a glance · U.S. Drought Monitor

Air quality

Worst days

98th-percentile day 21 µg/m³ (24-hour standard 35)

Ozone

66 ppb, 4th-highest daily 8-hour reading at Maple Canyon, 8.7 mi away (standard 70)

Delaware County AQI, 2025

204 good days, 35 moderate, 3 unhealthy for sensitive groups or worse of the 242 days indexed; peak 119, median 40

Delaware County AQI, 2026 so far

55 good days, 6 moderate and 0 unhealthy for sensitive groups or worse in the 61 days indexed through April 30; peak 64 (Ozone)

Air toxics

30 in a million lifetime cancer risk from outdoor air toxics across Delaware County (EPA AirToxScreen 2020), mostly formaldehyde (17) and carbon tetrachloride (3)

Permitted sources

no permitted air source operates inside this ZIP; nearest major source Worthington Cylinder Corporation in Westerville, 4.2 mi (EPA ECHO)

Air standards

Delaware County is a maintenance area for ozone (2008) (Columbus, OH, redesignated 2016), ozone (2015) (Columbus, OH, redesignated 2019), fine particulate (1997) (Columbus, OH, redesignated 2013), meaning it once failed that standard and must keep a plan to stay clean (EPA Green Book)

Ohio has 38 PM2.5 monitors, mostly in cities and near industry, so a rural ZIP borrows a reading from far away. 2025 includes Canadian wildfire smoke days. Air-toxics risk is EPA's modelled lifetime estimate for the county as a whole; EPA's national average is about 30 in a million, and formaldehyde, with the globally mixed carbon tetrachloride background and acetaldehyde, makes up most of it.

Source: EPA Air Quality System, 2025 annual summary files (monitor annual concentrations, county AQI) and the 2026 daily county AQI file; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center to the nearest monitor · EPA air data files · EPA AirToxScreen · EPA Green Book · EPA ECHO

Toxic and Superfund sites

0 facilities have reported toxic chemical releases or transfers to EPA's inventory from inside this ZIP, and 0 sites appear in the Superfund program's list (most assessed and never listed).

58 EPA-registered facilities of all kinds in this ZIP: 0 brownfield sites in the cleanup program, 10 hazardous-waste handlers, 1 with air permits, 34 with water discharge permits.

Nearest landfill: Westerville City Landfill, 6.6 mi from the center, municipal solid waste landfill. Ohio EPA's list includes closed and historic dumps.

State cleanup program: 0 sites inside this ZIP, 1 within 3 miles of the population center; the nearest is Butterfield Landfill, 3 mi from the center, site assessment.

Voluntary cleanups: 0 properties inside this ZIP hold an Ohio EPA covenant not to sue after a Voluntary Action Program cleanup; 0 such properties within 3 miles of the population center, nearest Otterbein College Equestrian Fac, Westerville, 4.7 mi. These are former industrial and commercial sites certified clean enough to reuse.

Solid waste: no licensed solid waste facility inside this ZIP; nearest Global Container Services Inc (construction debris processor), 8.6 mi from the center; 0 within 5 miles of the center (Ohio EPA licences, 2026). Compost sites and transfer stations are where most of a county's trash and yard waste actually goes.

Hazardous waste (EPA ECHO): 7 active RCRA handlers inside this ZIP; none had a violation in the last 3 years. Nearest treatment, storage or disposal facility: Clean Harbors Recycling Services of Ohio LLC in Hebron, 27.7 mi. Handlers include every business that generates hazardous waste, from body shops to chemical plants.

Underground tanks: no underground storage tanks in use, 29 closed over the years; 17 leaking-tank releases on record, all closed out, 1 inside a drinking-water source protection area; 1 reported since 2015, the latest in 2015 (EPA UST Finder, Ohio records as of 2018-2019).

Drop-off sites: the nearest scrap tire drop-off is Delaware County Transfer Station, Delaware OH, 10.2 mi away (1 within 15 mi); the nearest household battery drop-off is Direct Tools Factory Outlet, Sunbury, 3.7 mi away (25 within 15 mi) (Ohio EPA).

The inventory covers larger manufacturers and federal facilities that use listed chemicals; reporting means use or release, not a measured hazard to neighbours. Superfund status: on, proposed for, or deleted from the list after cleanup.

Source: EPA Facility Registry Service, Superfund (SEMS and NPL) sites and Toxics Release Inventory reporters, points inside the ZIP boundary; distance from the ZIP's population-weighted center · EPA Facility Registry · EPA Superfund sites · Ohio EPA cleanup sites · EPA UST Finder · EPA ECHO

Toxic releases

No facility inside this ZIP files a Toxics Release Inventory report. Only plants in listed industries with 10 or more workers that handle a listed chemical above its threshold must file, so small shops and most businesses never appear.

Source: EPA Toxics Release Inventory, basic data files for Ohio, reporting years 2020 to 2024 (2024 shown); facilities placed by their coordinates; dioxin rows reported in grams are left out of the pound totals · EPA TRI data files

Dams

Nearest high-hazard dam: Horace Troop Pond Dam, 2.4 mi, condition poor (recreation, 21 ft high, 36 acre-feet, built 1956, on Tributary To Alum Creek, private owned).

Inside this ZIP: 4 dams, 1 high-hazard, 0 rated poor: Alum Creek Dam (high hazard, condition not available); Berkshire Lake Dam (low hazard, condition fair) and 2 more.

"High hazard" describes what a failure would do downstream, not the dam's shape; Ohio rates more than a third of its inventoried dams in poor condition, mostly small private lake dams. Emergency action plans are required for high-hazard dams.

Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, National Inventory of Dams (August 2026 release); straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center. Condition assessments come from Ohio's dam safety program. · National Inventory of Dams

Disasters on record

Strongest nearby: F2 on 1973-05-08, 17.3 mi track.

18 federal declarations for Delaware County since Ohio's first in 1956 (12 major disasters): severe storm 6, tornado 3, snowstorm 3. Latest: Tornadoes (2024).

0 earthquakes of magnitude 2 or more within 25 miles since 1970.

Warnings since 2015 (National Weather Service, Delaware County): 16 tornado warnings (2017: 1, 2019: 4, 2020: 2, 2022: 2, 2023: 2, 2024: 5), 160 severe thunderstorm warnings, 20 flash flood warnings, 32 flood warnings and 138 flood advisories, 9 winter storm or blizzard warnings, 27 heat warnings or advisories, 7 extreme cold or wind chill warnings, 2 snow squall warnings; 1,006 products in all.

Mitigation grants (FEMA): 6 hazard mitigation projects in Delaware County since 2011, worth $2.6 million ($1.9 million federal), covering 7 properties; mostly property buyouts, miscellaneous, mitigation planning. Largest: safe rooms for Delaware (County), $967,788 (fiscal 2013).

Mitigated properties: FEMA money has treated 2 properties in this ZIP between 2011 and 2013: 2 safe rooms built. Buyouts turn repeatedly flooded lots into permanent open space.

Disaster aid to households: 143 households in this ZIP registered with FEMA after 4 declared disasters; 44 were approved for $170,742 of housing and other-needs help. Registrations by event: tornadoes (2024): 132; severe winter storms, flooding and mudslides (2005): 8; severe storms and flooding (2004): 2.

147 severe weather reports for Delaware County since 2016 in NOAA's Storm Events log: 92 damaging thunderstorm wind, 27 river and street flooding, 14 hail, 8 flash floods. Largest hail 2 in (Mar 14, 2024); strongest measured gust 70 mph (Jul 23, 2022); 3 injuries; about $1.5 million in reported damage, the costliest being tornadoes on Mar 14, 2024 ($1.0M). Zone-wide advisories add 50 winter weather, 5 high wind, 5 winter storms.

Tornado tracks are straight lines from touchdown to lift-off; a near miss counts, a direct hit is not distinguished. Declarations include the 2020 COVID-19 emergency for every county; the latest, declared 2 May 2024 (DR-4777), covers the 14 March 2024 tornadoes in eleven counties, Indian Lake among them.

Source: NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database 1950-2025; OpenFEMA disaster declarations summaries; USGS earthquake catalog (M2+, 1970 to date); NOAA Storm Events database 2016 to 2026 by county. Distances from the ZIP's population-weighted center. · NOAA SPC tornado data · OpenFEMA · USGS earthquakes · NOAA storm events · IEM warning archive

Spills and releases

What spilled

oils and hydraulic fluid (10), diesel and fuel oil (10), sewage, manure or storm water (4)

Largest

about 400,000 gallons of sewage human in 2021, Berlin Twp, into Alum Creek

Reached water

3 of them reached a creek, river, ditch or storm drain (named or unnamed)

By year

2021: 3, 2022: 3, 2023: 7, 2024: 7, 2025: 4, 2026: 4

Anyone who spills more than a reportable quantity must call Ohio EPA within 30 minutes, so the log mixes a few gallons of diesel on a highway shoulder with real releases; the reported volume is the caller's first estimate. Every report in Ohio EPA's open-data layer carries coordinates; air-pollution complaints and calls where nothing was found are left out of this count.

Source: Ohio EPA Emergency Response spill reports (Spills2 open data), reports with coordinates inside the ZIP boundary, 2021 to date · Ohio EPA spills data · Ohio EPA Office of Emergency Response

Oil and gas wells

Status

1 producing, 49 plugged or abandoned, the rest drilled but idle, gas storage, orphan, expired permits or unknown

Operators

J-N-J Oil Llc (1 producing)

Ohio has drilled since 1860, so most wells here are old, shallow and plugged; unplugged orphans and injection wells are the ones that matter for groundwater. Well-head points can be a few hundred feet off for the oldest records.

Source: Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, public well inventory (well-head points); counts inside the ZIP boundary and within 1 mile of the ZIP's population-weighted center · ODNR oil and gas · ODNR GIS services

Abandoned mines

Undermined land can subside and old workings can discharge acid mine water; ODNR's Abandoned Mine Land program funds repairs, and mine-subsidence insurance is included automatically in 26 eastern counties and offered as an option in 11 more. Maps drawn before 1977 are incomplete, so "none" means none mapped.

Quarries, pits and working mines: nearest Delaware Plant (limestone, National Lime & Stone Co., 2,970,000 tons sold), 13.2 mi away in Delaware County; 0 within 3 miles, 0 within 10 (ODNR Industrial Minerals Locations, 2015, which includes surface and underground coal mines).

Source: Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Mines of Ohio (abandoned underground mine maps, coal and industrial minerals, pre-1977), overlaid on the ZIP boundary in an equal-area projection · ODNR mines of Ohio · ODNR Geological Survey

Soils and septic

Soil

Bennington silt loam, 2 to 6 percent slopes; Bennington makes up 85% of the unit, 4% slope

Water

somewhat poorly drained; flooding none, ponding none

Septic

Very limited for a leach field under Ohio's rule

Basements

Very limited for dwellings with basements

Farmland

Prime farmland if drained

Elevation

981 feet above sea level at the ZIP's population center; Ohio runs from 455 feet where the Ohio River leaves the state to 1,549 feet at Campbell Hill

One point stands for the ZIP; soils change field by field, and a site evaluation is what the health department goes by. "Very limited" means the standard design will not work, not that nothing will.

Source: USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, SSURGO soil survey via Soil Data Access; the map unit at the ZIP's population-weighted center and its dominant component's interpretations; Copernicus GLO-90 elevation model (via Open-Meteo) at that center · USDA Soil Data Access · Web Soil Survey · Open-Meteo elevation

Parks and public land

Alum Creek Recreation Area

recreation area, 2,815 acres inside the ZIP

Alum Creek State Park

state park, 2,306 acres inside the ZIP

Nearest state park: Alum Creek State Park, 1.2 mi.

Protected land: 15.8% of this ZIP (4,171 acres) is in the USGS Protected Areas Database inventory of fee-owned parks, preserves and recreation land (public agencies, land trusts, and private clubs, camps and utility land, as their owners report it): 2,818 acres federal, 1,123 acres local, 224 acres private, 7 acres state. Largest: Alum Creek Recreation Area (Army Corps of Engineers), 2,818 acres; Hoover Reservoir Park (city), 1,007 acres; Blackhawk Golf Club (private owner), 143 acres. 14% of the ZIP is protected land open to the public.

Trails: 2.4 miles of named trails cross this ZIP: Ohio to Erie Trail (2.4 mi, statewide trail); 7.2 miles more are proposed or planned. 3.5 miles of state bike route C run through it (ODNR statewide trails inventory).

Open access as reported by each owner; local inventories vary, so a golf course or school field can be listed and a new park missed.

State lands nearby (ODNR facility layers): nearest boat ramp: New Galena Launch Ramp at Alum Creek State Park, 2.2 mi (4 within 5 miles); fishing access: Fishing Access at Alum Creek State Park, 2.2 mi (8 within 5 miles); swim area: Boater Swim Area at Alum Creek State Park, 4.6 mi (2 within 5 miles); campground: Campground/Campsite at Alum Creek State Park, 4.5 mi (1 within 5 miles).

Source: USGS Protected Areas Database of the United States 4.1 (open-access fee, designation and easement polygons), overlaid on the ZIP boundary; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center to the nearest ODNR state park · USGS PAD-US · ODNR GIS services

Wetlands

354 acres pond, 266 acres forested/shrub wetland, 45 acres emergent wetland. Largest single wetland: 28 acres of freshwater forested/shrub wetland.

Vernal pools: 43 potential high-quality vernal pools covering 28 acres lie inside this ZIP (Ohio EPA screening): seasonal woodland pools that dry by summer, hold no fish, and are where salamanders and fairy shrimp breed.

High-quality wetlands: nearest is O'Shaughnessy Reservoir Park (City of Columbus), 12 acres, 12.8 mi away; 0 within 10 miles.

Mitigation sites: 1 stream or wetland mitigation site inside this ZIP; nearest Glade at Highland Lakes, 2.3 mi away (a permittee-responsible site under an environmental covenant); 17 within 10 miles. These are wetlands and streams built or restored to replace ones filled under Clean Water Act permits.

Assessed wetland: 5 Ohio EPA study wetlands inside this ZIP; nearest Alum Creek State Park Africa Rd 2, a wetland, 1.8 mi away: ORAM 56 of 100 (category 2) (surveyed 2009); 20 within 10 miles. Category 3 wetlands are the state's best and hardest to fill; category 1 are degraded.

Mapped from aerial photography, mostly 2004 to 2007 (the Lake Erie watersheds were re-mapped from 2021 imagery, a few areas date from 1976 to 2005 or 2014 to 2023), so small and seasonal wetlands are undercounted and ponds dug or filled since then are missing; a site delineation decides whether a lot is jurisdictional. Emergent means marsh, forested and shrub means swamp.

Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Wetlands Inventory (Ohio geodatabase), freshwater wetland and pond polygons clipped to the ZIP boundary; lakes and river channels excluded, imagery mostly 2004 to 2007 (Lake Erie basin 2021) · USFWS wetlands inventory · Ohio EPA GIS services

Land cover

Developed

21%: 1% high intensity (downtown blocks, big-box lots), 3% medium (apartments, small-lot houses), 7% low (houses on larger lots), 11% open space (lawns, parks, golf courses, road verges)

Farmland

42%: 25% row crops, 17% pasture and hay

Crops 2025

of 5,743 cropped acres, 47% soybeans, 37% corn, 2% wheat and small grains (plus 2% wheat followed by soybeans, counted under soybeans), 6% hay and alfalfa, 8% vegetables, orchards, fallow and other crops; 4,445 acres of pasture and grass (USDA Cropland Data Layer)

Forest

30%, plus 0.7% grass and shrub

Water and wetland

5.7% open water, 0.8% wetland

Paved and roofed

5% of the ZIP's surface is impervious; rain that lands there runs straight to a storm drain or stream instead of soaking in

Tree canopy

26% of the ZIP sits under tree canopy

Area

38.9 square miles of land

Land cover is classified from Landsat imagery at 30 metre pixels, so a house on a wooded lot can read as forest and a farm lane as open space. Stream health starts to slip once about 10% of a watershed is impervious, and is usually poor above 25%.

Source: National Land Cover Database 2021 (USGS and the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium): land cover, percent impervious surface and tree canopy at 30 m, summarised over the ZIP boundary · NLCD · USDA Cropland Data Layer · ODNR pre-settlement vegetation

People

Education

62.8% of adults 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 23.9% a graduate degree; 18.9% stopped at high school or earlier

Ages

27.2% under 18, 12.8% 65 or older

Race and origin

81.7% white, 4% Black, 4.6% Hispanic or Latino, 4.3% Asian, 5.4% other or two or more races

Born abroad

6.8% of residents (974 people); largest countries of birth: India (201), El Salvador (182), China (77)

Veterans

5.8% of adults

Households

3.1 people per household on average; 9% of households are one person living alone, 79% married couples

Who lives here

47% of households include children, 25% someone 65 or over and 4.2% are a senior living alone; of people 15 and over, 67% are married, 24% never married, 8% divorced and 2% widowed

Poverty

3.6% of residents live below the poverty line, 3.9% of children and 5.1% of people 65 and over; the Gini index of income inequality is 0.41 (0 would mean every household earns the same, 1 that one household earns everything). County-wide, the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate is 4.3% (3.6% of children) with a median household income of $136,215 (SAIPE)

Ancestry

most often reported: German 24%, English 13%, Irish 12%

Movers

5.2% of residents lived somewhere else a year earlier, 1.0% in another state and 0.3% abroad

Language

0.4% of households speak limited English; 2.0% speak Spanish at home

Moving

15,034 people moved into Delaware County between the returns they filed in 2022 and 2023 and 11,967 moved out (net +3,067, 196,275 stayed put); most arrivals came from Franklin, OH (7,675), Union, OH (333), Licking, OH (243); most leavers went to Franklin, OH (4,187), Union, OH (437), Morrow, OH (434) (IRS)

Metro or rural

USDA rural-urban continuum code 1 of 9 for Delaware County: metro - counties in metro areas of 1 million population or more

Nonprofits

61 tax-exempt organizations registered to addresses in this ZIP; 92% are 501(c)(3) charities and 20% churches or religious groups; largest: Mommies Matter ($369,000), 8687 Columbus Sharks ($315,000), Largent Fam Private Foundation Tr ($282,000) (IRS)

County growth

Delaware County went from 214,141 people in April 2020 to 242,032 in July 2025 (+13.0%): 10,534 births, 7,772 deaths and a net +24,155 from migration since 2020; in 2025 alone a net 3,718 moved in from elsewhere in the U.S. and 945 arrived from abroad (Census estimates)

Since 1900

First counted in 1810 with 2,000 people and 21,817 by 1850, Delaware County counted 26,401 people in 1900, 30,278 in 1950, 42,908 in 1970, 109,974 in 2000 and 214,141 in 2020; it has never been larger than today (9.2 times its 1900 size, decennial censuses)

Commuting area: USDA classes this ZIP as a metropolitan suburb with heavy commuting to the core (rural-urban commuting area code 2 of 10, 2020 edition).

Race shares follow the Census categories, with Hispanic origin counted separately from race. Five-year averages centered on 2022. Moves count people on tax returns whose address changed county, so students and the very poor are undercounted.

Source: Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020 to 2024 five-year estimates by ZIP Code Tabulation Area (tables B15003, B03002, B05002, B21001, B01001, B25010, B11001, B17001, B19083, B04006, B07003, C16002, B05006, B11005, B11007, B12001); county population estimates, vintage 2025; IRS exempt organization master file; USDA rural-urban continuum codes 2023; USDA ERS rural-urban commuting area codes 2020; 2020 Census PL 94-171 redistricting file, group quarters (table P5); IRS Statistics of Income county migration, returns filed in 2022 and 2023; Census SAIPE 2024 county poverty and median income; decennial county counts from the Census Bureau report Population of States and Counties of the United States 1790 to 1990 · Census ACS · Census population estimates · IRS migration data · USDA ERS county codes · USDA ERS commuting area codes · 2020 Census redistricting data · Census SAIPE · IRS exempt organizations

Jobs and commuting

Largest employers by sector: Education 390, Construction 303, Hotels and restaurants 209. 55% of local jobs pay over $3,333 a month, and 70% of residents' jobs do.

Businesses: 229 establishments with 1,206 employees and $64 million a year in payroll in 2023; most common: construction (53), professional and technical services (41), administrative and waste services (21), real estate (18) (ZIP Business Patterns).

Workplace safety (OSHA): 22 inspections of workplaces in this ZIP since 2020 (3 after deaths or injury reports, 2 after complaints, 10 planned, 7 on referrals); most inspected: Erlin The Framer, Llc. (1), Soto Exterior Trim And Siding (1), Juan Martinez (1). 2 worker deaths investigated since 2015 and 1 hospitalisation: 2023, employee dies after fall from ladder; 2017, employee falls from ladder, struck by object, and is killed.

County labor market: Delaware County's unemployment rate was 2.9% in July 2026 (4.0% a year earlier), with 128,967 people in the labor force and 3,775 looking for work. Employers in the county paid an average of $1,836 a week in the first quarter of 2026 (up 12.0% on the year) to 99,464 workers at 7,562 establishments, employment up 1.0%; the largest private sectors are company management (13,103 jobs, $4,274 a week), retail (12,266 jobs, $698 a week), health care and social assistance (12,062 jobs, $1,145 a week). (BLS)

Working-age residents: 72.9% of people 16 and over here are in the labor force, and 4.1% of the civilian labor force was unemployed, averaged over 2020 to 2024 (Census ACS). Residents' most common occupations: management and business 33%, health practitioners 12%, sales 11%; 13% are self-employed and 14% work for a government.

Federal money: in fiscal 2025 the federal government obligated $146 million in contracts performed in Delaware County ($682 a resident) and $175 million in grants ($817 a resident) and $1.9 billion in direct payments to people and organizations (USAspending; Social Security, Medicare and most benefits are not counted).

County economy: Delaware County produced $15.4 billion of real GDP in 2024 (2017 dollars, up 18.3% since 2019); personal income came to $96,573 a person in 2024, 1st of Ohio's 88 counties and up 27% since 2019 before inflation (BEA).

County type (USDA ERS, 2015 codes): Delaware County is a metro county with a nonspecialized economy, flagged for being a retirement destination.

How they get there: 71.9% drive alone, 3.3% carpool, 0% transit, 0.7% walk, 0.2% bike, 23.4% work from home (ACS).

Where residents work: 2% inside this ZIP; 8% in Columbus (43215), 6% in Westerville (43082), 6% in Columbus (43219) (shares of the 7,562 residents with an Ohio workplace).

Unemployment-insurance records tie each job to a workplace and a home address; large employers sometimes report every worker at a headquarters, which inflates a few ZIPs. Self-employment, the military, the Postal Service, most farm work and a large part of federal civilian employment are missing (federal jobs come from OPM records that omit several agencies and, in practice, most of Wright-Patterson).

Source: Census Bureau LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES 8), 2023, all jobs; populated census blocks assigned to ZIP Code Tabulation Areas by interior point, workplace-only blocks by the majority ZCTA of their block group or tract; Census ZIP Code Business Patterns 2023; OSHA enforcement data via the Labor Department open data catalog; BLS county unemployment (LAUS) and wages (QCEW); Census ACS 2020 to 2024 labor force by ZIP Code Tabulation Area (B23025); USAspending federal awards by county, fiscal 2025; BEA county GDP and personal income · Census LEHD · BLS local unemployment · BLS QCEW · BEA county GDP · USAspending · OSHA enforcement data · Census ZIP Business Patterns · Census ACS · USDA ERS county typology · CDFI Fund Opportunity Zones

Upward mobility

Meaning

a little better than the Ohio median of 42 for low-income children

Incarceration

1.66% of those children were in jail or prison on census day 2010

Coverage

44% of the ZIP's residents live in tracts with an estimate

The rank describes people born around 1980 who were children here in the 1980s and 1990s; neighbourhoods change, so it is a record of what the place did for one generation, not a forecast. Estimates for small tracts are noisy.

Source: Opportunity Atlas tract outcomes (Chetty, Friedman, Hendren, Jones and Porter, 2018; Census Bureau and IRS data for children born 1978 to 1983), population-weighted to ZIPs through 2020 census blocks · Opportunity Atlas · Opportunity Insights data

Social vulnerability

Socioeconomic status

10th percentile: poverty, unemployment, housing cost burden, no high school diploma, no health insurance

Household characteristics

25th: people 65 and over or 17 and under, disability, single-parent households, limited English

Racial and ethnic minority status

46th

Housing and transportation

15th: multi-unit and mobile homes, crowding, no vehicle, group quarters

The index ranks tracts on how much help their residents would need in a disaster or disease outbreak, using American Community Survey 2018 to 2022 figures. Ranks are within Ohio; a ZIP is the average of its tracts weighted by residents.

Source: CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index 2022, census tracts ranked among Ohio tracts, population-weighted to the ZIP through 2020 census blocks · CDC/ATSDR SVI

Community health

Weight and activity

obesity 33.2%, no leisure-time physical activity 17.6%

Chronic conditions

diabetes 10.3%, high blood pressure 32.2%, COPD 5.3%, cancer (any but non-melanoma skin cancer) 9.1%

Habits

current smoking 11.0%, binge drinking 18.9%, short sleep 30.6%

Mind

depression 21.9%, frequent mental distress 13.7%, feeling lonely 29.7%

Access

uninsured under 65 4.6%, yearly checkup 82.1%, dental visit 77.3%

Hardship

any disability 19.6%, food insecurity 7.2%

Heart and lungs

current asthma 9.9%, coronary heart disease 5.2%, stroke 2.5%, arthritis 27.7%

Keeping up

79.1% of adults with high blood pressure take medicine for it, 90.0% had a cholesterol check in 5 years

Social needs

housing insecurity 6.7%, no reliable transportation 4.5%, utility shut-off threat 5.0%, lacking emotional support 16.8%

Provider shortage

none for primary care; none for dental; 100% live in a designated mental health shortage area (score 15 of 25) (HRSA; higher scores mean greater need)

Coverage (Census)

2.3% of residents have no health insurance (0.6% of children); 4% are on Medicaid and 74% have coverage through an employer

Disability (Census)

7.7% of residents report a disability, 17% of those 65 and over

County (County Health Rankings 2025): Delaware County sits in health group 1 of 10 among U.S. counties for population health (1 is healthiest) and group 1 for community conditions. Premature death 4,329 (Ohio 9,740) years of life lost before 75 per 100,000; one primary care doctor for every 677 people (Ohio 1,328), one mental health provider for every 628 people (Ohio 286), one dentist for every 1,582 people (Ohio 1,535); preventable hospital stays 1,596 (Ohio 3,033) per 100,000 Medicare enrollees; injury deaths 51.6 (Ohio 100.7) and suicides 11.3 (Ohio 14.7) per 100,000; infant deaths 3.5 (Ohio 7.0) per 1,000 births; teen births 3.5 (Ohio 17.4) per 1,000 girls 15 to 19; children in poverty 5.5 (Ohio 17.5) percent; fine-particle air pollution 8.2 (Ohio 7.8) micrograms per cubic metre; at least one community water system in the county had a health-based drinking water violation in 2023. Drug overdoses: 12 deaths in the 12 months ending December 2025 (23 a year earlier, 40 at the highest since 2020, in the 12 months ending August 2021), about 5.2 per 100,000 residents against 20.8 statewide (CDC provisional counts).

Cancer (NCI State Cancer Profiles): Delaware County records 453.6 new cancers a year per 100,000 people, age-adjusted, for 2018 to 2022 (Ohio 472.9, U.S. 448.6), about 1,099 cases a year, with the rate falling 0.5% a year; cancer deaths 129.1 per 100,000 (Ohio 160.3, U.S. 145.4), falling. By site, per 100,000 (Ohio in parentheses): lung 44.6 (63.6), colorectal 32.1 (38.4), female breast 146.6 (133), prostate 142.5 (120.8), bladder 19 (21.8), leukemia 11 (13).

Medicare: 41,593 people in Delaware County were on Medicare in 2025 (17% of residents): 38,902 aged 65 or over and 2,691 younger people with disabilities. 48% chose a Medicare Advantage plan, 8% also had Medicaid and 85% had Part D drug coverage; enrollment is up 25% since 2020 (CMS).

Modelled from a national telephone survey and the ZIP's demographics, so these are estimates of what residents would report, not counts of patients; small ZIPs carry wide margins.

Source: CDC PLACES, 2025 release (BRFSS 2023 and 2022, ACS 2019-2023), model-based ZCTA estimates of crude adult prevalence; County Health Rankings 2025 and CDC provisional overdose counts for the county; HRSA shortage area designations weighted to the ZIP; Census ACS 2020 to 2024 (insurance, disability); CMS Medicare Monthly Enrollment, county, 2025 · CDC PLACES · County Health Rankings · CDC overdose data · NCI cancer profiles · HRSA data

Life expectancy

Ohio's statewide figure for the same years was 77.6; the United States 78.7. Differences of a year or two between neighbouring ZIPs are within the estimates' error; differences of five or more are real and track income, smoking and access to care.

Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project (USALEEP), 2010-2015, census tracts weighted by 2020 block population · CDC USALEEP

Nearest hospital

392 beds · no trauma designation listed · 1 general or critical-access hospital within 10 miles, 12 within 25.

Medicare rating: ★★★☆☆ · emergency room: yes · typical ER visit 167 minutes door to discharge (Ohio median 155)

Patients' verdict: 66% would definitely recommend it, 64% rated their stay 9 or 10 out of 10 (★★★☆☆ patient-experience rating, 505 surveys).

Outcomes: 30-day death rates after heart failure 11.9% (about the national rate), heart attack 13% (about the national rate), pneumonia 15.7% (about the national rate), July 2022 to June 2025; the patient-safety composite for serious complications (July 2022 to June 2024) is about the national value (Medicare).

Community health center: nearest Heart of Ohio Family Health OB-GYN at St. Ann's, Westerville, 6.7 mi away; 0 within 3 miles, 4 within 10. These federally funded clinics see anyone and charge on a sliding scale.

Veterans: nearest VA site is Columbus, OH Vet Center, Columbus (vtcr), 12.3 mi away; 0 VA sites within 10 miles, 4 within 25.

Providers: 135 active health care providers list a practice address in this ZIP: 10 physicians, 1 nurse practitioner or physician assistant, 1 dentist, 20 mental health professionals, 1 urgent care center, 4 home health or hospice agencies; most common physician specialties: Internal Medicine (3), Colon & Rectal Surgery (2), Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism (2) (NPPES registry, August 2026).

Dialysis: nearest Davita Park Side Dialysis, Westerville, 6.8 mi away, 25 stations, Medicare ★★★★☆ (DaVita); 0 within 5 miles, 9 within 15.

Source: federal HIFLD hospital inventory (via FEMA) with Medicare Care Compare star ratings, emergency-service flags, median emergency department times (measure OP_18b), HCAHPS patient survey results and 30-day death rates and patient-safety composites (Complications and Deaths file; a campus with no record of its own carries its parent hospital's figures, labelled); NPPES NPI registry, August 2026 monthly file, active records by practice ZIP; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center (some listings lag closures and mergers); HRSA health center sites, CMS dialysis facilities (geocoded with the Census geocoder) and the VA facility list · CMS Care Compare data · HIFLD · HRSA data · CMS NPI files

Nursing homes

0 certified homes within 5 miles, 40 within 15.

Medicare rating

★★★★★ overall; inspections ★★★★☆; staffing ★★☆☆☆

Beds

120 certified

Ownership

For profit, corporation

Penalties

no federal fines or payment denials since 2023 (CMS)

Stars are Medicare's Care Compare ratings; a 1-star home failed inspections or is thinly staffed, and the abuse flag means a citation for harm in the past year or two. Ratings shift every quarter.

Source: Medicare Care Compare nursing home provider and penalties files (CMS), geocoded with the Census Bureau; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center · CMS Care Compare data

Crime

Violent

4 offenses: 0 murders, 2 rapes, 2 robberies, 0 aggravated assaults (0.1 per 1,000 residents; Ohio 3.2)

Property

78 offenses: 8 burglaries, 68 thefts, 2 vehicle thefts (2.8 per 1,000; Ohio 16.9)

Other

17 simple assaults, 31 vandalism reports, 6 drug offenses, 6 weapons violations

Reporting

12 months of 2024 on file; 28,085 residents served; this department covers the 35% of the ZIP's residents in its territory, the rest fall under others

Trend

violent offenses up 100% from 2 in 2023; property down 35% from 120

Rates cover the whole agency's territory, not this ZIP alone: a city's downtown and its quiet edges share one number. Murders, rapes and assaults are counted once per victim and other offenses once per incident, as the FBI's Crime Data Explorer does; a large department's figures can still fall somewhat short of the Explorer's, which takes in later submissions, and a sheriff's population is only the unincorporated area it serves.

Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, NIBRS incident data for Ohio, 2024 (2023 for the trend): Group A offenses per reporting agency (violent = murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault; property = burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, arson), murders, rapes and assaults counted once per victim; the agency is the police department of the ZIP's largest local government (city, village or township) when it has one of its own, found in the FBI's 2023 and 2024 rosters or the USGS police station inventory, otherwise the sheriff of the ZIP's county; a rate needs at least six months of 2024 on file and is annualized from fewer than 12; the Ohio figures pool the 511 police departments and sheriff's offices with all 12 months on file · FBI Crime Data Explorer · USGS structures service

Police and post office

1 station within 3 miles, 4 within 8. Inside this ZIP: Genoa Township Police Department.

Nearest post office: Galena Post Office, 1.6 mi; 1 inside this ZIP.

Townships without their own department are policed by the county sheriff, whose office may be at the county seat; the state highway patrol covers the roads. The inventory lists stations, not patrol zones. It also misses some departments and still lists some that have closed; the atlas adds the departments that reported at least six months of 2024 crimes to the FBI but had no station in it, and drops the closed and duplicate records it found.

Source: USGS National Map structures inventory (police stations, post offices), with closed and duplicate records dropped, wrong names corrected and departments it lacks added from OpenStreetMap and the Census Bureau geocoder (September 2026); straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center · USGS structures service · OpenStreetMap · Census Bureau geocoder

Fire and EMS

1 station within 3 miles, 10 within 8.

Inside this ZIP: Genoa Township Fire Department; Harlem Township Division of Fire Station 450.

Source: USGS National Map structures inventory (fire and EMS stations; most Ohio records last updated 2019 to 2022), Columbus- and Cleveland-area stations checked against the cities' station lists, September 2026. Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania stations near the line are included; Kentucky and West Virginia stations across the Ohio River are not. Straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center. Stations open or close without the inventory always catching up. · USGS structures service · Columbus fire stations · Cleveland fire stations

Public library

0 libraries within 3 miles, 4 within 8.

Open

about 59 hours a week

Building

16,000 square feet

Community Library

1 building, serves 23K people, 7.5 visits per resident a year, 294K items lent, 1,060 programs, $1.8M annual income

Museums: nearest Big Walnut Area Historical Society, Sunbury, 5.1 mi away; 0 within 5 miles, 36 within 15 (IMLS 2018 directory: museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos).

Source: Institute of Museum and Library Services, Public Libraries Survey fiscal 2024 (outlet and system files) and Museum Data Files 2018 (museums); straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center · IMLS Public Libraries Survey · IMLS Museum Data Files

Grocery access

Distance

95% of residents live more than half a mile from a supermarket, 88% more than 1 mile

Without a car

0% live in a tract flagged for low income and low vehicle access; 1.4% of households have no vehicle (Census ACS 2020 to 2024)

Poverty

2.7% of residents below the poverty line

SNAP stores

no supermarket or grocery store inside this ZIP take SNAP, alongside 3 convenience stores; nearest supermarket or grocery store Kroger N-802 (super store), 3.4 mi from the ZIP's center; 0 supermarkets and grocery stores within 3 miles (USDA, 2026)

SNAP households

2% of households received SNAP benefits in the past year (Census ACS 2020 to 2024)

Setting

33% of residents in urban tracts, across 7 tracts

A "supermarket" here is a large grocery store, supercenter or club; dollar stores and corner groceries do not count, and stores that opened since 2019 are missing from the distance figures; the SNAP store list is current. Rural distance flags mean a long drive, not necessarily hardship.

Source: USDA Economic Research Service, Food Access Research Atlas: 2019 Large Retailer Access Map (2010 census tracts, 2019 supermarket list; ERS's name for this file since July 2026), tract values weighted into ZIPs by 2020 census block population; SNAP store counts from USDA Food and Nutrition Service retailer locations, 2026; SNAP and no-vehicle households from Census ACS 2020 to 2024 · USDA ERS Large Retailer Access Map · USDA SNAP retailers · Census ACS

History

Genoa Township 35% Berlin Township 24% Berkshire Township 18% Harlem Township 13%

Before the settlers

The area that became Genoa Township was used for centuries before white settlement, with Wikipedia's township article citing Adena and Hopewell mound-building cultures, followed by the Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Mingo, Ottawa, Shawnee and Wyandot peoples, the Wyandot said to be 'among the last to remain until forced out in 1843.' The 1880 county history gives specific, local texture to this: it says the Big Walnut Creek valley, alive with fish and game, was a place 'the Indians held ... in high favor,' and that after the treaty line moved and Native families were required to withdraw, they nonetheless 'would avail themselves of every opportunity to come down and hunt' in their old territory. No source consulted names a specific village, mound, or named leader located inside the township's own boundaries; for the fuller regional record of nations, treaties and removal, see the county file.

Peoples named in the record: Adena culture, Hopewell culture, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Ottawa, Shawnee, Wyandot.

Delaware County

Delaware County's prehistoric record centers on the Adena and a related Late Prehistoric culture; no Paleo-Indian or Archaic site turned up in the sources checked, which is a gap in the record rather than evidence of absence. The best-preserved earthwork is the Highbank Park Works, a thirteen-acre semi-elliptical embankment of four three-foot-high sections bordered by a ditch, on the Olentangy's east bank in what is now Highbanks Metro Park (Orange Township); Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis surveyed a related earthwork here in 1846 and published it as Plate XIV of their 1848 Ancient Monuments… more

Ohio before the treaties: peoples, earthworks and cessionsstatewide

Periods

• Paleo-Indian, about 13,000 to 8,000 BC
• Archaic, about 8000 to 800 BC
• Early Woodland / Adena, about 800 BC to AD 100
• Middle Woodland / Hopewell, about 100 BC to AD 500
• Late Woodland, about AD 500 to 1000
• Late Prehistoric / Fort Ancient and Whittlesey, about AD 1000 to 1650
• Protohistoric, the Erie and the Beaver Wars, roughly 1650s
• Historic, 1700s resettlement
• Removal, roughly 1795 to 1843

Nations of the 1700s

Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Seneca (of Sandusky), Ottawa (Odawa), Erie, Ojibwe (Chippewa) / Potawatomi.

Treaties that ceded Ohio land

• Treaty of Fort McIntosh (1785): US commissioners George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee; Wyandot, Delaware (Lenape), Ojibwe (Chippewa), and Odawa (Ottawa).
• Treaty of Fort Harmar (1789): US commissioner Arthur St. Clair (governor, Northwest Territory), with Josiah Harmar and Richard Butler; Haudenosaunee, Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, Wyandot…
• Treaty of Greenville (1795): US commissioner Major General Anthony Wayne; twelve nations of the Western Confederacy — Wyandot, Delaware (Lenape), Shawnee, Odawa (Ottawa), Ojibwe (Chippewa),…
• Treaty of Fort Industry (1805): US Indian agent Charles Jouett; Ottawa, Potawatomi, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Wyandot, Munsee, Delaware (Lenape), and Shawnee.
• Treaty of Detroit (1807): William Hull (governor, Michigan Territory); Ottawa, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Wyandot, and Potawatomi.
• Treaty of Brownstown (1808): William Hull for the US; Ojibwe (Chippewa), Ottawa, and Potawatomi (Council of Three Fires), plus Wyandot and Shawnee.
• Treaty of Fort Meigs / Maumee Rapids (1817): US commissioners Lewis Cass and Duncan McArthur; Wyandot, Seneca, Delaware (Lenape), Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwe (Chippewa).
• Treaty of St. Marys (1818): US commissioners Jonathan Jennings, Lewis Cass, and Benjamin Parke; across the six agreements: Wyandot/Seneca/Shawnee/Ottawa (September 17), Wyandot again (Sept…
• Treaty of Lewistown and Treaty of Wapakoneta (1831)
• Treaty of Upper Sandusky / Wyandot (1842): The Wyandot Nation and the US government. I could not confirm the US commissioner's name from any source I opened — flagged gap.

Earthworks that survive

• Newark Earthworks (overall complex) (Licking County), Hopewell
• Great Circle Earthworks (Licking County), Hopewell
• Octagon Earthworks (Licking County), Hopewell
• Serpent Mound (Adams County), Disputed
• Fort Ancient (Warren County), Hopewell
• Hopewell Culture National Historical Park (Ross County), Hopewell
• Miamisburg Mound (Montgomery County), Adena
• Shrum Mound (Franklin County), Adena
• Fort Hill (Highland County), Hopewell
• Marietta Earthworks (Washington County), Hopewell
• Flint Ridge (Straddles the Licking–Muskingum county line; the Ohio History Connection's preserve itself sits in Hopewell Township, Licking County, about 3 miles north of Brownsville. County), Used by essentially every prehistoric culture in the region across more than 10,000 years, with especially intensive use by the Hopewell

Statewide notes researched from archive.org, delawaretribe.org, en.wikipedia.org and others; every entry carries its own links in the research file.

How Genoa Township, Delaware County began

Genoa Township was set off from Harlem Township on June 4, 1816, and named -- unusually for Ohio, since it is the only township in the state to carry the name -- for Genoa, Italy, Christopher Columbus's birthplace, at the suggestion of settler Elisha Bennett. Jeremiah Curtiss, arriving from Connecticut around 1806, is remembered as its first settler, building a sawmill, gristmill and still on Big Walnut Creek; his brother Marcus built the brick inn and post office at Galena that still stands. The Stephen Sharp House on Africa Road later became a documented stop on the Underground Railroad. Today the township holds Hoover Reservoir along its Big Walnut Creek and has grown into a populous Columbus suburb.

Settled c. 1806, incorporated June 4, 1816 (set off from Harlem Township); by Jeremiah Curtiss (first settler); Elisha Bennett (proposed the name). source

The name. Genoa Township was named by early settler Elisha Bennett for Genoa, Italy, the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. Unlike the Italian city's pronunciation, the township's name stresses its second syllable, 'ge-NO-a.' It is the only township in Ohio to carry the name, though a separate village called Genoa exists in Ottawa County. source

Timeline12

• 1800The first deeds to land within what becomes Genoa Township are granted under the U.S. Military District system, under President John Adams. source
• c. 1806Jeremiah Curtiss, of Connecticut, becomes the township's first settler, building a sawmill, gristmill and still along Big Walnut Creek. source
• 1807Joseph Latshaw arrives from New England, settling first in Berkshire Township before relocating to the northern part of Genoa near Galena. source
• 1808Marcus Curtiss, Jeremiah's brother, arrives in Genoa Township. source
• 1810Hezekiah Roberts arrives from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, buys out Latshaw's claim, and begins farming the cleared bottomland; supplies run short and he walks the Indian trail to Zanesville and back for provisions. source
• 1816Genoa Township is set off from Harlem Township on June 4 and named for Genoa, Italy at Elisha Bennett's suggestion. source
• 1822The Marcus Curtiss Inn is built (or rebuilt) in brick near Galena, serving as an inn, the township's first post office, and one of its first brick buildings; Marcus Curtiss serves as first postmaster. source
• 1833Diadatus James Keeler, who had arrived from Vermont in 1819 and become a prominent sheep and hog farmer, builds a one-and-a-half-story house southeast of Galena with a tiger-maple staircase exceptional for its era. source
• c. 1857Stephen Sharp, son of early Westerville settler Garrit Sharp, builds a house on Africa Road that later becomes documented as part of one of the largest concentrations of Underground Railroad family stations in Ohio outside Ashtabula County's John Brown family houses. source
• 1866In September, one of the worst floods in local memory overflows the Big Walnut Creek bottoms, drowning livestock and destroying haystacks and buildings. source
• 1873Passenger rail service begins through Genoa Township, continuing until 1950; freight service on the same line lasts until 1982 and the corridor is later repurposed as the Genoa Trail. source
• 1953Construction begins on Hoover Reservoir, later covering a significant portion of the township along Big Walnut Creek; sources disagree on the completion year, Wikipedia giving 1958 and the township's own history page giving 1955. source

Stories

Named for Columbus's Birthplace

Most Ohio townships took their names from New England hometowns, Revolutionary War figures, or plain description. Genoa Township took a more unusual path: early settler Elisha Bennett proposed naming it for Genoa, Italy, the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, when the township was set off from Harlem Township on June 4, 1816. The choice stuck, and Genoa Township remains the only township of that name in Ohio -- a small linguistic quirk survives too, since local usage stresses the name's second syllable, 'ge-NO-a,' unlike the Italian city itself. source

Two Brothers on the Big Walnut

Jeremiah Curtiss came from Connecticut around 1806 and is remembered as the first white settler in what became Genoa Township, building a sawmill, a gristmill and a still along the banks of Big Walnut Creek. His brother Marcus followed in 1808. It was Marcus, not Jeremiah, who left the more lasting mark: around 1822 he built or rebuilt in brick an inn near Galena that also served as the township's first post office, with Marcus himself as postmaster. That building, the Marcus Curtiss Inn, still stands on Sunbury Road and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. source

A Family of Underground Railroad Stations

Garrit Sharp settled near what became Westerville and helped build an early Methodist church there; several of his children built homes of their own nearby, including his son Stephen, who put up a house on Africa Road in rural Genoa Township around 1857. According to local history research, each of the Sharp family's houses served as an Underground Railroad station, together forming possibly the largest concentration of family Underground Railroad stations anywhere in Ohio outside the John Brown family's houses in Ashtabula County. People escaping slavery reportedly moved from the Sharp House along Alum Creek to the Patterson House, then north again toward Marengo. The Stephen Sharp House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. source

Not found: The batch hint 'Cook, John, Farm' (43021 ZIP) was checked and found to actually be the John Cook Farm in Harlem Township, not Genoa, and is excluded here. The GNIS historical name Ralph, shared with Orange Township's 43082 ZIP, could not be located precisely in this pass. Maxtown is confirmed by a 1997 cultural-resource survey title to sit within Genoa Township, but no source opened in this pass gave its founding date, namesake, or what became of it beyond its survival as a modern place name (Maxtown Road, Maxtown Plaza); this remains a gap. No source consulted names a specific Native village, mound, or leader located inside the township's own boundaries. (confidence medium)

Delaware County

Delaware County was created by the Ohio General Assembly on February 10, 1808, out of Franklin County, and named, like its seat, for the Lenape (Delaware) people. The seat, Delaware, was platted that same year by Moses Byxbe and Henry Baldwin on the west bank of the Olentangy River, on the ground of a former Mingo village, Pluggy's Town, and around a sulphur spring that grew into a failed resort hotel before becoming, in 1842-44, the seat of Ohio Wesleyan University. The county gave the country a president, Rutherford B. Hayes, born in Delaware in 1822, and gave up more than half its original territory to the later counties of Union, Marion and Morrow. Four twentieth-century reservoirs - O'Shaughnessy, Delaware Lake, Hoover and Alum Creek - now cover parts of the county's river valleys, the last of them drowning the Underground Railroad settlement of Africa along with a run of Adena burial mounds. Since 1990 Delaware County has been one of Ohio's fastest-growing counties, its population more than doubling as Columbus's northern suburbs - Powell, Lewis Center, Orange Township - filled in what were, within living memory, farm townships.

Settled 1807-12-02 (John Beard buys 624 acres on the Olentangy's west bank, the first settlement within present Delaware Township), platted 1808-05-09 (Moses Byxbe and Henry Baldwin plat the town of Delaware on the Olentangy's west bank, replacing an unrecorded east-bank plat of March 7, 1808), incorporated 1808-02-10 (county organized by act of the Ohio General Assembly); 1816 (town of Delaware incorporated, the first incorporated town in the county); by Ohio General Assembly, 'An Act Establishing the County of Delaware,' organized out of Franklin County; first officers elected that spring: John Welch, Avery Powers and Ezekiel Brown, commissioners; Rev. Jacob Drake, treasurer; Dr. Reuben Lamb, recorder; Solomon Smith, sheriff; Azariah Root, surveyor. source

The name. Delaware County and its seat were both named for the Lenape, whom English speakers called the Delaware after Virginia's colonial governor, Lord De La Warr. Moses Byxbe and Henry Baldwin, who owned the land, chose the name for their new town in 1808, on ground that had itself been a Mingo rather than a Lenape village (Pluggy's Town); the county took the same name when the legislature organized it that February, following a common pattern in early Ohio of naming counties for the Native nations displaced from them rather than for the people who had actually lived on the specific site.

The county seat. Delaware was platted in 1808 by Moses Byxbe and Henry Baldwin on the west bank of the Olentangy River, on and around the sulphur spring and the site of the former Mingo village Pluggy's Town; an earlier plat on the east bank, agreed to in March 1808, was never recorded and was abandoned for the surviving west-bank plat filed that May. Special commissioners fixed Delaware as the permanent county seat in March 1808, over a rival bid by Byxbe himself to make his own land at 'Berkshire Corners' (near present Ostrander) the seat instead; Delaware then narrowly lost a second, larger contest in 1812, when the legislature chose the newly platted Columbus over Delaware as Ohio's state capital by a single vote. The town was incorporated in 1816, the first incorporated town in the county.

Timeline25

• 1772Mingo chief Pluggy founds Pluggy's Town on the Olentangy River, on the ground that becomes the city of Delaware. source
• 1776-12-29Pluggy is shot dead leading an attack on McClelland's Station, Kentucky; Virginia's 1777 campaign against his own town is called off beforehand for fear of striking neutral villages. source
• 1795-08-03The Treaty of Greenville cedes the land that becomes Delaware County to the United States; the treaty line itself forms the county's original northern boundary. source
• 1807-12-02John Beard buys 624 acres on the Olentangy's west bank, the first settlement within present Delaware Township. source
• 1808-02-10The Ohio General Assembly creates Delaware County out of Franklin County. source
• 1808Delaware County's first officers are elected that spring: John Welch, Avery Powers and Ezekiel Brown, commissioners; Jacob Drake, treasurer; Reuben Lamb, recorder; Solomon Smith, sheriff; Azariah Root, surveyor. source
• 1808-05-09Moses Byxbe and Henry Baldwin plat the town of Delaware on the Olentangy's west bank, replacing an unrecorded east-bank plat from that March. source
• 1812Delaware loses the contest for Ohio's new state capital to the newly platted Columbus by a single vote in the legislature. source
• 1816Delaware is incorporated, the first incorporated town in the county. source
• 1820Union County is created, taking the larger part of its territory from Delaware County. source
• 1822-10-04Rutherford B. Hayes, the future 19th president, is born in Delaware, ten weeks after his father's death. source
• 1824Marion County is formed, taking further territory from Delaware County. source
• 1828Moses Byxbe and Henry Baldwin donate four acres, including the sulphur spring, to the village of Delaware. source
• 1834The Mansion House, a hotel built at the sulphur spring to a design by Judge Powell, opens as a health resort; it fails as a business within a few years. source
• 1842/1844Ohio Wesleyan University is chartered by Ohio Methodists in September 1842 and opens in the former Mansion House building in November 1844. source
• 1848Morrow County is formed, bringing Delaware County to its present extent of about 500 square miles in eighteen townships. source
• 1851-04The Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad reaches Delaware, the county's first railroad. source
• 1861-1865Delaware hosts two Union training camps on opposite banks of the Olentangy: one for the white 96th and 121st Ohio infantry regiments, the other for the 127th Ohio Infantry, later renamed the 5th United States Colored Troops. source
• 1913-03-29A flood on the Olentangy River inundates the city of Delaware. source
• 1925The O'Shaughnessy Dam is completed on the Scioto River in southern Delaware County, supplying Columbus with drinking water. source
• 1946The Little Brown Jug harness race is founded at the Delaware County Fairgrounds. source
• 1951Delaware Lake, a flood-control reservoir on the Olentangy north of the city, is completed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. source
• 1955Hoover Reservoir, on Big Walnut Creek, is completed; its dam stands in Franklin County, but most of its water lies within Delaware County's Genoa Township. source
• 1974Alum Creek Reservoir is completed, flooding the Underground Railroad settlement of Africa and the Adena mound valley below it. source
• 2000-2020Delaware County's population nearly doubles, from 109,989 to 214,124, as Columbus's suburbs expand north into the county, making it for years one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. source

County stories

Pluggy's Town

Before there was a Delaware, there was Pluggy's Town, a Mingo village on a horseshoe bend of the Olentangy founded around 1772 by a Mohawk-born chief the settlers called Pluggy. He built a mixed following of Mingo, Shawnee and Wyandot fighters, numbering perhaps 300 by one account, and used exaggeration and rumor as readily as raids to keep the frontier on edge; Virginia officials complained of 'the obstinate and wicked Disposition of the said Indians of Pluggy's Town.' Through 1776, encouraged and supplied by the British commander at Detroit, Henry Hamilton, Pluggy led repeated raids into Kentucky, killing the frontiersman John Gabriel Jones among others. Virginia's government prepared an expedition to strike Pluggy's Town itself in 1777, but Governor Patrick Henry called it off, worried his militia could not tell Pluggy's warriors from the neutral Delaware and Shawnee living nearby. The precaution came too late to matter to Pluggy: on December 29, 1776, storming McClelland's Station in Kentucky, he was shot dead by four of the fort's defenders. His town on the Olentangy outlived him by three decades before Ohio settlers arrived to found Delaware on the same ground. source

The Fight for the County Seat

Moses Byxbe arrived in central Ohio in 1804 already planning to make himself the center of it: he bought land at a place called Berkshire Corners and told prospective settlers it would become not just the Delaware County seat but, if his luck held, the capital of Ohio. Many came on that promise. Then, in 1808, Byxbe quietly bought a half-interest in two military-district sections on the Olentangy from Henry Baldwin of Pittsburgh and abandoned Berkshire overnight for a new town he and Baldwin platted on the river - first on the east bank in March, then, for reasons the record does not explain, on the west bank that May. The sulphur spring nearby gave his new site, in the words of the county's first historians, 'prestige to the location as the probable site of a famous watering-place,' and despite a bitter protest from the Berkshire settlers he had recruited and then abandoned, special commissioners fixed the permanent county seat at Delaware in March 1808. Byxbe's luck ran out only once more: when the legislature chose a site for the new state capital in 1812, Delaware lost to the still-unbuilt town of Columbus by a single vote. source

The Medicine Waters and the Mansion House

Long before Ohio Wesleyan University existed, its ground was known for a sulphur spring that Native visitors, by one settler's account, called the 'Medicine Waters,' a place where buffalo were said to have gathered as readily as people. Moses Byxbe and Henry Baldwin donated four acres around the spring to the village of Delaware in 1828, and in 1833 a newcomer named C. W. Kent proposed leasing the land to build a spa hotel. Kent had no architect nearer than Columbus, so a local judge, Powell, drew the plans himself; the resulting Mansion House opened in 1834, and Kent promptly traveled to New York and bought $10,000 in furnishings on the strength of owning the springs - only to have his creditors seize the goods in Columbus before they ever reached Delaware. The hotel sat empty for two years, ran as a health resort under new management from 1836 to 1840, and, having never quite worked as a business, was then sold to the Methodist Church. Three or four years later, the college that became Ohio Wesleyan University opened inside the old hotel building, which still stands today as Elliott Hall. source

Ten Weeks Fatherless

Rutherford Hayes and Sophia Birchard Hayes moved from Vermont to Delaware, Ohio, part of the wave of settlement that followed the War of 1812. Rutherford Sr. died on July 20, 1822, weeks before his wife gave birth; when their son arrived on October 4, 1822, on East William Street, she named him for the father he never met, Rutherford Birchard Hayes. Sophia raised him and his older sister Fanny alone, never remarrying, in a county that was still mostly recent farmland surveyed out of the old military lands. That infant grew up to practice law, serve as a Union major general, and become the 19th President of the United States in 1877. Delaware's high school now bears his name, and a statue raised by public subscription was dedicated at William and Sandusky streets on October 4, 2019, Hayes's 197th birthday. source

The Welsh of Radnor

David Pugh and Henry Perry, both born in Wales, were the first white settlers in what became Radnor Township, arriving in 1803, years before Delaware County itself existed. Pugh had bought a full section of land from a Dr. Jones of Philadelphia and, in 1805, platted 150 acres of it into blocks and lots as a town he called New Baltimore, convinced it would grow into a great city and make his name. It never did: in the fall of 1810, Thomas Warren, newly arrived from Pennsylvania, bought the whole plat and turned it back into a farm. Other Welsh families - Lodwig, Jenkins, Watkins, the Joneses and Philipses - followed Pugh into Radnor over the next decade, planting a community whose name still echoes a county in Wales, even after Pugh's paper city vanished back into farmland. source

Drake's Defeat

In the summer after Hull's surrender in 1812, Captain William Drake led a company of mounted rangers out from Delaware County toward Lower Sandusky, and on their first night in camp, bored and mischievous, he slipped into the woods, fired his gun, and came running back yelling that Indians were attacking. His own sentries took up the cry; his lieutenant, more devoted to his legs than his weapon, bolted into the forest and ran some ten miles before daybreak, arriving bareheaded at the Radnor settlement swearing the whole company had been massacred but him. Panic spread through Delaware within hours: families fled on horseback, in wagons and on foot toward Worthington, Franklinton and even Chillicothe; in the confusion one family lost a toddler bounced from a moving wagon (he was found safe), and one woman, running back for her baby, grabbed a stick of firewood by mistake and fled with that instead. Drake, oblivious, marched his company on to Sandusky as ordered and finished the campaign without incident, while the settlers who had scattered took days to trickle home and count their losses. He was later elected an associate judge, and the county's first historians note dryly that he was 'never wholly forgiven' by some of the people his joke had put to flight. source

Africa, Under the Reservoir

In the 1820s, Samuel Patterson and other antislavery farmers settled a community on Alum Creek's east side that they first called East Orange; when a pro-slavery neighbor mocked their politics by nicknaming it Africa, the settlers kept the name. Patterson hid freedom-seekers in his own home and brought abolitionist speakers to the local Wesleyan Methodist church, and in 1859 about thirty formerly enslaved people from a North Carolina plantation, the Alstons, settled in Africa outright, working the antislavery farmers' land and joining their congregation as free residents on a station of the Underground Railroad's Sycamore Trail. The community was still there, sixteen people strong, when it appeared on the television show Hee Haw in 1973. It did not survive the decade: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had already begun damming Alum Creek in 1970, and by 1974 Africa's houses, farms and stretch of the Sycamore Trail lay under the new reservoir alongside five relocated cemeteries and the Adena burial mounds archaeologists had raced to excavate first. A 0.75-mile Heritage of Freedom Trail near the Galena boat ramp, opened in 2024, is the only place left to walk the ground where Africa stood. source

Sources: archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · genoatwp.com · 1808delaware.com · commons.wikimedia.org · frontierpartisans.com · ohiohistory.org · delawaresource.com · co.delaware.oh.us · ia800503.us.archive.org · dn760008.eu.archive.org · corpslakes.erdc.dren.mil. Researched 2026-09-15 by sonnet; every entry above links its own page. · Ohio History Connection · Internet Archive (county histories) · Wikimedia Commons · Remarkable Ohio (historical markers)

Historic places

• Cook, John, Farm (building)
• Curtiss, Marcus, Inn (building)
• Keeler, Diadatus, House (building)

Place names (USGS): 30 named communities (Rome, Alum Creek, Center Village, Cheshire, Africa and more); 2 named streams end here (Little Walnut Creek, Prairie Run); 4 named lakes or reservoirs (Alum Creek Lake, Alum Creek Lake, Pomeroy Ponds and more). Federal maps carry these names; the communities include hamlets and crossroads that never incorporated.

Listing recognizes significance and brings review of federally funded projects; it does not restrict a private owner. Historic districts count once, at their center.

Source: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places spatial data (point file); listings whose point falls inside the ZIP boundary · National Register data · USGS GNIS

School district

• Olentangy Local53% of residentsLocal school district
• Big Walnut Local47% of residentsLocal school district

ZIP codes and school districts do not share boundaries, so this ZIP is split between them.

4 public schools inside this ZIP: Berkshire Middle School (5 stars); Hylen Souders Elementary School (3.5 stars); Johnnycake Corners Elementary School (5 stars); Walnut Creek Elementary (5 stars). Nearest to the population center: Berkshire Middle School (5 stars), 2 mi; 0 within a mile, 6 within 3.

Enrolled here: 2,482 students attend the 4 public schools inside this ZIP with 2023-24 enrollment on file; 18.6 students per teacher. 12% of the 2,482 students at the 4 schools reporting it qualify for free or reduced-price meals. (NCES)

Enrollment: 3,176 residents attend kindergarten through 12th grade, 10% of them at private schools; 597 are in college or graduate school (Census ACS 2020 to 2024).

Money, fiscal 2023: Olentangy Local took in $400 million, 13% from the state, 84% local and 3% federal, and spent $13,848 per pupil on day-to-day operations for 23,281 students, 69% of it on instruction; capital outlay $38.1 million (Census school finance survey via NCES).

Child poverty: the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate puts 2.6% of Olentangy Local's school-age children below the poverty line (598 of 23,389 aged 5 to 17; SAIPE).

Source: Ohio school district boundaries (OGRIP, 2014 edition, via ODOT) · 2020 census blocks · public school locations from NCES EDGE, 2024-25 · enrollment and meals from the NCES Common Core of Data 2023-24 · private schools from the NCES Private School Survey 2023-24 · district finances from the Census F-33 survey, fiscal 2023 · child poverty from Census SAIPE 2024 · ODOT GIS · NCES EDGE · NCES Common Core of Data · NCES private schools · Census SAIPE · Census school finances (F-33)

School report card

Components

achievement 5 stars, progress 4 stars, gap closing 5 stars, early literacy 4 stars, graduation 5 stars, college and career readiness 3 stars

Achievement

performance index 94.6% of ODE's maximum score for the year (the average of the top 2% of district scores, not the highest score possible) (score 103.9, 103.1 the year before)

Graduation

99% of the class of 2024 graduated in four years; 71.3% of that class (graduates or not) showed college, career, workforce or military readiness

Spending

$13,566 per pupil in 2023-24 against $12,759 statewide

Teachers

average salary $91,421, 13 years of experience, 76.9% with a master's degree, 15% in their first years of teaching

Enrollment

23,232 students in 2024-25

Three stars means the district meets state standards, five that it significantly exceeds them, one that it needs significant support. Achievement stars follow family income closely; the progress component (growth from year to year) is the fairer measure of teaching. Charter and private schools are not in the district figures.

Source: Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, 2024-2025 School Report Cards (district overview, achievement, expenditures per pupil and educator files), for the district where most of this ZIP's residents live · Ohio school report cards

Colleges

Otterbein University is a private nonprofit college with 2,705 students over the 2023-24 year; published tuition and fees $34,899 a year; 69% of a 599-student entering class graduated (six-year bachelor).

9 institutions within 10 miles, 31 within 25.

Next nearest: Dental Assistant Pro LLC-Columbus (6.9 mi).

Universities, community colleges, career schools and private colleges all count; branch campuses appear only where IPEDS lists them separately. Graduation rates follow first-time full-time students for 150% of normal time.

Source: NCES IPEDS 2024 directory, 12-month enrollment 2023-24, tuition and fees 2023-24 and graduation rates for the 2017 entering cohort at four-year institutions and the 2020 cohort at two-year ones; straight-line miles from the ZIP's population-weighted center · NCES IPEDS

Local government

• Genoa Township, Delaware County35% of residentsTownship
• Berlin Township, Delaware County24% of residentsTownship
• Berkshire Township, Delaware County18% of residentsTownship
• Harlem Township, Delaware County13% of residentsTownship
• Galena (village)6% of residentsVillage
• Orange Township, Delaware County3% of residentsTownship

ZIP codes and municipal and township boundaries do not share boundaries, so this ZIP is split between them.

Source: ODOT municipal corporation and township boundaries · 2020 census blocks · Ohio EPA grants awarded in 2025 (OEPA_Achievements map service) · Auditor of State unauditable entities list · ODOT GIS · Auditor of State · Ohio EPA grants (OEPA_Achievements)

Who represents this ZIP

U.S. Senate: Bernie Moreno (R), Jon Husted (R)

• Troy Balderson RU.S. House OH-12 · 73%Zanesville · since 2018 · site
• Jim Jordan R OH-4 · 27%Urbana · since 2007 · site
• Andrew O. Brenner ROhio Senate 19Delaware · since 2018 · site
• Beth Lear ROhio House 61 · 73%Galena · since 2022 · site
• Brian Lorenz R 60 · 27%Powell · since 2023 · site

District lines cut through this ZIP, so more than one member serves its residents; the share is by 2020 population.

Source: ODOT district boundaries · members from the U.S. House, Ohio Senate and Ohio House directories, September 2026 · U.S. House · Ohio Senate · Ohio House · ODOT GIS