ZIP code 43080: Utica

Drinking-water compliance

Most homes here are on private wells, which EPA does not regulate or test; a well owner tests on their own.

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

Most homes here are on private wells, which nobody samples for compliance; a well owner tests on their own.

Source: EPA Six-Year Review 4 compliance monitoring data, 2012 to 2019 (TTHM, HAA5 and coliform from distribution-system samples of the system that serves most of this ZIP; nitrate, arsenic, radionuclides, solvents, herbicides and metals from the entry points of the same system); non-detects counted as zero

PFAS

Most homes here are on private wells, which nobody tests for PFAS unless the owner pays for it.

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; results in nanograms per litre (parts per trillion) · Ohio EPA PFAS

Lead at the tap

Most homes here are on private wells; lead there comes from the house plumbing, and only a lab test of the tap will find it.

Children: the Ohio Department of Health lists this ZIP as high-risk for childhood lead exposure, mostly from old paint and soil, so every child living here should get a blood lead test at ages 1 and 2 (Medicaid covers it, and doctors are required to order it).

Housing age: 34% of the homes here were built before 1960 and 24% before 1940, when lead service lines, lead solder and lead paint were common; 46% predate 1980 (Census ACS 2020 to 2024).

Source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System lead and copper 90th-percentile results (Envirofacts) and EPA's service line inventory dashboard (2026 Q2), for 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

Most homes here are on private wells: no fluoride is added, and any treatment is the household softener or filter.

The health department counts 96.3% of Licking County residents on community water as receiving fluoridated water.

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 the system serving most of this ZIP; 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

Most homes here are on private wells, which algal blooms do not reach.

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

till over sand and gravel, part of the N Fork Licking Buried Valley Aquifer (buried valley setting); wells there yield 5 - 25 gallons a minute, deposits > 100 ft thick

Bedrock

Logan and Cuyahoga Group undivided (No Black Hand Present), yielding 5 - 25 gpm to a well

Setting

Interbedded Sandstone and Shale; water table 50-75 ft down, 2-4 in/yr recharge, clay loam soil (hydrogeologic setting 7Aa); pesticide index 92

Karst

168 karst and spring points in ODNR's inventory inside the ZIP (0 field-verified), 2.3 per square mile

Well logs

1,152 drilled wells on file (216.5 per 1,000 residents), median 126 ft deep, 15 gallons a minute median test yield, water 50 ft down

Aquifers

59% of wells in bedrock, 41% in sand, gravel and other unconsolidated material; typical well drilled 1997, 495 since 2000; uses: Domestic 1,049, Agric/Irrig 34

Wellhead protection

1% of this ZIP lies inside Ohio EPA source water protection areas for 4 public water systems (Utica Village PWS); the largest, Velvet Ice Cream Company, is rated high susceptibility in a buried valley setting

Geology

48% 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 19 mi away (Ohio EPA and ODNR Geological Survey)

Injection wells

6 Class V injection wells on Ohio EPA's books inside this ZIP (6 active): 5 large septic, 1 other; these put fluids underground above or into drinking water aquifers

Water table

LI-4 OH monitoring well (ODNR), 6.5 mi away: water 21.5 ft below ground on 2026-04-27; averaged 21.9 ft in 2015 to 2019 and 21.9 ft over the latest year, about the same; range 16.9 to 24.6 ft over 3,757 readings since 2015

Nitrate risk

EPA researchers put the chance that a public water system in the Dog Hollow Run-North Fork Licking River subwatershed exceeds the nitrate limit at 34% if it draws on groundwater and 47% 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 Utica Wellfield (Licking County), 0.6 mi away: 350 ft deep in sandstone or shale (Cuyahoga Group aquifer); bedrock 0 ft down; wells there yield 5 to 25 gallons a minute; not currently sampled. 12 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 19 mi from the center

Wellhead protection

1% of the ZIP lies inside Ohio EPA source water protection areas for 4 public water systems (Utica Village PWS); the largest, Velvet Ice Cream Company, is rated high susceptibility in a buried valley setting

River intakes

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

Vulnerability index

DRASTIC 79 (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

0.423 million gallons a day design flow

Compliance

6 of the last 12 quarters with a violation; currently in violation (not significant); 8 effluent limit exceedances in 3 years

Other discharge permits: 1 facility inside this ZIP other than sewage plants holds a Clean Water Act permit (factories, water plants, quarries, package plants, storm water); 12 facility-quarters with a violation in the last three years.

Sewage sludge: 94 farm fields covering 2,191 acres inside this ZIP are permitted for spreading treated biosolids, mostly from Newark Wwtp (1,287 acres), Utica Wwtp (641 acres), Mount Vernon Wwtp (163 acres); 2 fields have drawn a complaint (Ohio EPA). Biosolids carry nutrients and, increasingly under scrutiny, PFAS.

Sludge source: 1 permitted biosolids generator is inside this ZIP; nearest Utica WWTP, 1 mi away; 3 within 10 miles (Ohio EPA).

State water loans: 1 project inside this ZIP has borrowed $5.1 million from Ohio EPA's revolving loan funds since 2025 (1 sewer, storm water and runoff project for $5.1 million), with $1.0 million of principal forgiven. Largest: WWTP Upgrade - Phase 1 (Utica, 2025, $5.1 million). Below-market loans are how most Ohio treatment plants and water mains get rebuilt.

Sewer planning: 58% of it is assigned to Licking County as the designated sewage management agency under Ohio's Clean Water Act section 208 plan (generic prescriptions); 3 agencies share the ZIP. The 208 plan decides who may build and extend sewers.

Stormwater: this ZIP lies outside Ohio EPA's regulated MS4 areas, so its storm drains and ditches carry runoff without a municipal stormwater permit.

Plants inside this ZIP: Village of Utica (0.423 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 14% of the land, recreation (bacteria) 100%, fish consumption 3%

Causes listed

bacteria (pathogens) (100%), nutrients (14%), ammonia (12%)

Cleanup plans

8% of the land is under a TMDL pollution budget

Watersheds here: Rocky Fork (not supporting); Lake Fork Licking River (not supporting).

Fish advisories (Ohio EPA): Wakatomika Creek (All waters (Coshocton, Knox, Licking, Muskingum Counties)): smallmouth bass one meal a month (mercury). Statewide, every other fish is one meal a week because of mercury.

Nearest stream assessment (Ohio EPA): N. Fk. Licking R. Upst. Utica @ Kirkpatrick Rd. on the North Fork Licking River, 1 mi away, draining 113 square miles: full attainment of its warmwater use; fish IBI 52 of 60 (2008); habitat QHEI 88.5 of 100. 12 assessed sites inside the ZIP, 7 within 3 miles, 36 within 10. Scores above about 40 (IBI), 36 (ICI) and 60 (QHEI) mean a healthy warmwater stream.

Stream designations (Ohio EPA water quality standards): 52.5 miles of designated streams cross this ZIP: 47.5 mi warmwater habitat, 5 mi exceptional warmwater habitat. Nearest specially protected stream: the Rocky fork, 2.6 mi away, an Outstanding State Water; 18% of the ZIP lies within a mile of such a stream, where new discharges face the strictest antidegradation review. 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 Kokosing River (Armstrong run (RM 28.04) to the mouth), 8.5 mi away, as Outstanding State Water for recreation.

PFAS in the river (Ohio EPA large river survey): at Licking R. Near Newark @ St. Rt. 16 (Stadden Bridge), 13.5 mi away, the water carried 77.63 ng/L of total PFAS (PFOA 1.9, PFOS 1 ng/L); fish fillets held 33.72 ng/g in bluegill and 18.91 ng/g in catfish (PFOS 13 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 Licking County used about 178 metric tons of pesticide active ingredient, 258 kg per square mile, 41st of Ohio's 88 counties. Largest: glyphosate 63 t, atrazine 26 t, metolachlor 20 t, acetochlor 10 t, 2,4-D 6 t. Atrazine, the corn herbicide, is the pesticide that most often shows up in Ohio tap water after spring rains; this county used 26 t of it.

Farms (2022 Census of Agriculture): 1,532 farms work 207,389 acres of Licking County, with 32.7% of its land in cropland, 135 acres to a farm. 19,018 cattle, 53,591 hogs, 765 broilers, 89 turkeys; 46,096 acres of corn and 58,737 of soybeans. Sales $389 million, 72% 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

• Licking96% of residentsDrains to the Ohio River
• Muskingum3% of residentsDrains to the Ohio River

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

H2Ohio: nearest project Grosse Brothers Treatment Wetland, funded 2024, in progress, 20.2 mi away: Over the past few decades, harmful algal blooms have been increasing in Buckeye Lake, a primary tourist destination 30 miles east of Columbus. In collaboration ...; 0 within 5 miles, 0 within 15. H2Ohio pays for wetlands, farm practices and lead line work to cut the nutrients behind Lake Erie's algae.

Source water: 64% of this ZIP drains to the river intake of Newark City PWS and sits inside its Ohio EPA source water protection area; 1% lies in the 1,000-foot stream corridor zone where spills and runoff matter most.

Watershed grants: nearest "CA&C Rail Depot Stormwater Management Demonstration" by City of Mount Vernon (stormwater management, SWIF), 10.6 mi away; 0 within 10 miles (Ohio EPA project lists: Section 319 and GLRI through fiscal 2023, SWIF through 2017).

Road salt: nearest went to City of Mount Vernon (equipment, 2026-2027), 10.9 mi away; 4 in Licking 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 Dog Hollow Run-North Fork Licking River subwatershed; its water runs on through Log Pond Run-North Fork Licking River, then Bowling Green Run-Licking River, then Dillon Lake-Licking River.

In 2015 Licking County drew about 21 million gallons a day of fresh water (USGS): 12.6 million for public supply (42% from wells, 100,000 people served at 63 gallons a person a day at home), 0.2 million for industry, 0.3 million for irrigation, 0.8 million for mining; 70,600 residents drew their own well water.

EnviroAtlas, Dog Hollow Run-North Fork Licking River: under 50 acres in the Conservation Reserve Program; 3,571 acres of grain crops; 56 miles of streams (2.3 per square mile); water use of 269 thousand gallons a day for homes; 39.8 inches of rain and snow a year; 11.2 kg of nitrogen per hectare falling from the air each year; farm nitrogen of 16.6 kg per hectare a year as manure and 19.1 kg as synthetic fertilizer; 2% of the farmland sits on drained hydric soils; potentially restorable wetlands on farmland cover 3% of the subwatershed; 2.4% of the land is paved or roofed; 52% of the stream banks keep natural cover (EPA EnviroAtlas national metrics, 2010s vintages).

Stream permits: 45% 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; 34% drains toward high-quality waters farther down and might qualify for the Army Corps' blanket nationwide permits after a field screening and 21% 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

$87,301 median

Income spread

12% of households earn under $25,000 a year, 45% $100,000 or more and 9.3% $200,000 or more

Rent

$789 a month, median gross

Owner-occupied

79% of 1,883 occupied homes; 53% of owners carry a mortgage

Typical home built

1984

Value spread

10% of owner-occupied homes are worth under $100,000 and 16% $500,000 or more; income per person $46,590 a year

Moved in

the typical owner moved in in 2005, the typical renter in 2016

Median age

40.4 years

Commute

31 minutes each way on average, 30% of commuters travel 45 minutes or more, 10% work from home

Housing stock

87% single-family detached, 4% in buildings of 5 or more units, 5.1% mobile homes; 5.9% of homes are crowded (more than one person a room)

Vacancy

9.3% of 2,076 housing units are vacant: 4.3% for rent, 1.8% for sale, 1.6% held for seasonal or occasional use, 1.6% other, such as homes held off the market, in probate or abandoned

Owner costs

23% of owners with a mortgage and 7% of owners without one spend 30% or more of income on housing

Evictions

2.32 eviction filings a year per 100 renter households in 2016 to 2018, 1.21 ending in a judgement (about 10 filings a year; Eviction Lab)

Fair market rent

$1,280 a month for a two-bedroom (one-bedroom $1,060, three-bedroom $1,570): HUD's fiscal 2026 small-area fair market rent, the benchmark for housing vouchers in the Columbus metro area

Tax returns

2,480 returns for 2022 averaging $65,354 of adjusted gross income; 27% reported under $25,000 and 3% reported $200,000 or more; 14% claimed the earned income credit and 28% were filed by people 60 or older (IRS)

Subsidized housing

2 tax-credit (LIHTC) properties with 60 low-income units, newest placed in service 2010; 1 HUD-assisted multifamily property with 40 assisted units (Section 8 and similar contracts). Housing vouchers used in private rentals are not counted

Banks

1 full-service bank branch from 1 bank inside this ZIP (FDIC); 1 credit union branch from 1 credit union (NCUA)

Strain

29% of renters pay 30% or more of income in rent; 5.5% of households have no vehicle; the median renter spends 17.7% of income on rent; the median owner with a mortgage spends 21.2% 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

1,473 one-family houses, 11 two-family houses, 3 three-family houses, 150 manufactured homes, 365 farmhouses; also 9 apartment buildings and 137 other residential parcels

Age

38% built before 1950, 56% before 1978 (1978: the year lead paint was banned for housing)

Size

median living area 1,620 sq ft; median lot 2.29 acres (condominiums left out)

Value

median appraised value $191,350 (tax year 2025): the county auditor's market value for property tax, not a sale price

Sales

63 sales in the 12 months to Sep 14, 2026 (median $220,025); 246 sales in 5 years (median $222,512, $151 a sq ft). Counted: sales the auditor marked valid or has not yet reviewed (sales marked not valid, and unreviewed ones under $10,000, are left out), single-parcel sales of homes, one per house (its newest)

Owners

70% owner-occupied (homes receiving the owner-occupancy tax credit); 6% company-owned

Neighborhoods

0 neighborhoods and 40 subdivisions (details load below)

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: county auditors' appraisal records: Knox County Auditor (as of Sep 12, 2026); Licking County Auditor (as of Sep 14, 2026); 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

2,389 single-family houses, 0 units in buildings of five or more, 26 in duplexes and small buildings

Value

$750.2 million of construction at the value declared on the permits

By year

2016: 287, 2017: 263, 2018: 260, 2019: 259, 2020: 286, 2021: 359, 2022: 247, 2023: 164, 2024: 141, 2025: 149, 2026 through July: 106

Caveat

2 of the ten years had fewer than 12 months reported by the permit office; the Census Bureau estimates the missing months, so those counts are partly or wholly imputed

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

+77% from 2020 to 2025

Last year

+12% in 2025

Since 2000

prices stand at 2.6 times their 2000 level

Series

tracked since 1986

Zillow's typical home value here is $297K (2026-07), up 5% over the year, up 28% over five years and up 76% over ten.

On the market (Realtor.com, August 2026): median asking price $332,450, $186 per square foot for a typical 1,923 sq ft listing; 13 active listings, 4 new this month; listings spend a median 61 days on the market; 18% of listings have cut their price. Realtor.com flags this ZIP's figures this month as low quality (13 active listings), so the asking price is not a market median.

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

North Fork Local 77% of residents

20.5 effective mills (29.8 gross); $1,437 a year on a $200,000 home. Operating 15.5, improvements 0.5, inside millage 4.5.

Northridge Local 19% of residents

26.4 effective mills (39.0 gross); $1,848 a year on a $200,000 home. Operating 15.9, bonds 2.3, emergency 4.1, inside millage 4.1.

Municipal income tax

Utica 1.75% (39% 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

North Fork Local 1% (77% of residents), Northridge Local 0.5% (19% of residents), East Knox Local none (4% of residents). Voted by the district and collected with the state income tax.

Sales tax

7.25% combined rate in Licking County: Ohio's 5.75% plus county and transit levies; this ZIP straddles counties or transit districts, so the rate depends on the address.

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-owned53% of residentsAmerican Electric Power (AEP)
• The Energy Cooperative co-op47% of residentsBuckeye Power, Inc.

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).

The Energy Cooperative outages, 2024: the average customer lost power for 243 minutes (113 minutes leaving out major storm days), about 1.6 interruptions a year.

The Energy Cooperative residential price, 2024: 16.88 cents per kWh, about $178 a month for the average home across 25,820 residential customers (EIA-861).

The Energy Cooperative solar and meters, 2024: no net-metered solar reported under its own name (Buckeye Power, the co-ops' generation cooperative, files one Ohio net-metering row: 3,058 systems, 32.6 MW in 2024); 100% of its 27,568 meters are two-way smart (AMI) meters (EIA-861).

Energy burden: households here spend an average 3.3% of income on electricity, gas and other fuels (about $3,233 a year against $97,710 of income); the 38% of households below 80% of the area median income spend 8.6%, and 32% 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

37% of the 1,883 homes here heat with utility gas.

Utility gas 37%Electricity 22%Propane or LP 36%Oil, wood, other 4%

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

Territories overlap here: Ohio Cumberland Gas Company also maps service in this ZIP.

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 4 companies operating in Licking County: Columbia Gas of Ohio, Knox Energy Cooperative Association, Inc., National Gas and Oil Cooperative, Ohio Cumberland 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: Denison Solar Array, 12.3 mi (solar, 2 MW).

0 plants within 10 miles totalling 0 MW.

Solar: Denison Solar Array, 2 MW AC (2017), 10 acres, 11.9 mi away; 1 utility-scale solar farm within 15 miles.

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

26.8 miles of transmission pipe cross this ZIP: Columbia Gas Trans Co 26.8 mi.

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

• Brightspeed93% of residentsBrightspeed (formerly CenturyLink)
• Windstream Ohio7% of residentsWindstream

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 91%Underserved, 25/3 to 100/20 2%Unserved, under 25/3 7%

Fiber reaches 17% of locations, cable 52%; a year earlier 71% were served.

Of 1,883 households, 64% subscribe to cable, fiber or DSL, 14% rely on a cellular plan only, and 10% have no internet at home.

Measured by Ookla speed tests, April to June 2025: typical fixed download 422.6 Mbps, upload 368.1 Mbps, 16 ms latency, across 480 tests from up to 95 devices in 63 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 95% · 5G 75%
• T-Mobile4G 81% · 5G 68%
• Verizon4G 100% · 5G 31%

Registered towers: 7 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 272.1 Mbps, upload 36.2 Mbps, latency 30 ms over 15 tests from up to 9 devices in 9 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

No public station inside this ZIP; the nearest of any kind is Weekly Electric, 9 mi. 0 stations within 5 miles of the ZIP's population center, 0 with DC fast charging.

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 8.9 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

21 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 0.64 and mix of homes and job types 0.50 on the EPA's 0 to 1 scales, where 1 is the most varied

Car-free households

5.5% 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

2 with gates; railroads: Columbus & Ohio River (13). The railroad reports no through or switching trains a day at any of these crossings (fewer than one a day, or the line is idle); fastest line 10 mph.

Licking County has logged 11 rail accidents since 2010, 9 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 1986, 2 built before 1950; oldest 1929, Bell Church Road over Rocky Fork

Busiest

SR 13 over N. Fork Of Licking River, 6,698 vehicles a day (2015 count)

Owners

county 13, state 8

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

496 a day on SR 13, 6% of its traffic

Driving

about 139K vehicle-miles a day on the 122 counted segments inside the ZIP; the typical segment carries 574 vehicles

Busiest local road

county road 31, 1,443 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: 3 people died in 3 crashes inside this ZIP in 2020 to 2024 (1 motorcyclist); 0 involved a drinking driver and 0 happened in the dark; most on US-62 (2). That is 11.3 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

Knox County (4I3), Mount Vernon, 7.8 mi, public use

Amtrak

Elyria station, 80 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

55% of tests at or above EPA's 4 pCi/L action level · median 4.4 · highest 254.5

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

7.5% of the ZIP's land is in that floodplain, and another 0.1% is in the 0.2% (500-year) zone. Zones mapped here: AE, A.

Design storms (NOAA Atlas 14): a 100-year storm here drops 5.9 inches in 24 hours (2.8 in a single hour, 4.4 in six); a 2-year storm 2.6, 10-year 3.7, 25-year 4.5, 500-year 7.7 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: North Fork Licking River at Utica OH, 1.3 mi away, draining 116 square miles. Record flow 10,200 cubic feet a second at a stage of 15.2 ft on 1979-09-14; the highest since 2016 was 6,410 on 2024-04-02 (USGS, 34 annual peaks, 1940 to 2025).

8 federal flood insurance policies are in force in this ZIP, covering $2 million of buildings; 62% of them are in a mapped high-risk zone; the typical policy costs $1,313 a year (about 1% of households).

5 federal flood insurance claims from this ZIP since 1978, 1 since 2010, paying about $17,433 in all; the worst year was 1979 with 2 claims.

Levees: nearest is a levee along Kokosing River, 9.8 mi away (de-accredited).

Community status: Utica takes part in the National Flood Insurance Program; flood map effective 03/16/15. Licking County's unincorporated areas take part in the National Flood Insurance Program and earn a Community Rating System class 7 (15% off policies in the high-risk zone); flood map effective 07/31/24.

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

• Hail93
• Landslide92

FEMA's expected annual loss here from all hazards: $1.6 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 82, tornado 57, winter weather 89.

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

50.6°F average; typical January low 18°, July high 84°

Hot and cold days

13 days a year reach 90°F; 129 nights fall below freezing, 4 below 0°F; 32 days never climb above freezing

Rain and snow

40.9 inches of precipitation on 82 days with a tenth of an inch or more; 26 inches of snow on 10 days with an inch or more, snow on the ground 39 days

Degree days

5,921 heating, 722 cooling (base 65°F): the higher the heating number, the bigger the winter gas bill

Drought (U.S. Drought Monitor): since 2020 Licking County has spent 21 weeks in moderate drought or worse, 10 of them severe or worse (most recently 10 weeks in 2024), and 62 weeks at least abnormally dry. The worst since 2000 was extreme drought in 2024/11; 3% of all weeks since 2000 were in drought. As of 2026-09-01: no drought.

Long run (NOAA, Licking County): the average year ran 51.7 °F over 1996 to 2025 against 50.1 °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 54.7 °F, and 2025 came in at 51.6 °F. Precipitation averaged 42.6 inches a year lately against 40.8 a century ago, 4% more; the wettest year was 2018 with 55.9 inches, and 2025 brought 40.6. More rain in bigger bursts is what strains storm sewers and septic fields.

Stations: Newark Wtr Wks (10.6 mi, temperature); Utica 4 WSW (5.1 mi, precipitation and snowfall; 12 years of snowfall record). Normals are thirty-year averages, so a single winter can run far above or below them; NOAA marks this snowfall normal provisional because the station record is too short or too patchy for a standard normal, and the temperature and precipitation figures here skip stations with under 10 years.

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

64 ppb, 4th-highest daily 8-hour reading at Centerburg WWTP, 13.2 mi away (standard 70)

Licking County AQI, 2025

210 good days, 34 moderate, 1 unhealthy for sensitive groups or worse of the 245 days indexed; peak 119, median 40

Licking County AQI, 2026 so far

54 good days, 7 moderate and 0 unhealthy for sensitive groups or worse in the 61 days indexed through April 30; peak 71 (Ozone)

Air toxics

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

Permitted sources

no permitted air source operates inside this ZIP; nearest major source Owens Corning in Mount Vernon, 8.6 mi (EPA ECHO)

Air standards

Licking 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

1 facility has 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).

33 EPA-registered facilities of all kinds in this ZIP: 0 brownfield sites in the cleanup program, 6 hazardous-waste handlers, 3 with air permits, 4 with water discharge permits.

Nearest landfill: St Louisville Landfill, 5.2 mi from the center, municipal solid waste landfill. Ohio EPA's list includes closed and historic dumps.

State cleanup program: 1 site inside this ZIP (Columbia Gas Transmission Co Utica Comp Sta), 1 within 3 miles of the population center; the nearest is Columbia Gas Transmission Co Utica Comp Sta, 2.9 mi from the center, remedial response.

Solid waste: 1 licensed waste facility inside this ZIP (1 compost site); nearest Utica Composting Facility (compost site), 1.1 mi from the center; 1 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): 3 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, 17.9 mi. Handlers include every business that generates hazardous waste, from body shops to chemical plants.

Underground tanks: 4 sites with 16 registered underground storage tanks in use (20 more tanks closed over the years); 15 leaking-tank releases on record, all closed out, 12 inside a drinking-water source protection area (EPA UST Finder, Ohio records as of 2018-2019).

Drop-off sites: the nearest scrap tire drop-off is Goodyear Tire Center, Newark OH, 10.9 mi away (4 within 15 mi); the nearest household battery drop-off is Y-NOT Cycling - Mt Vernon, Mount Vernon, 10.8 mi away (6 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: Knox Cattle Company Dam, 10.7 mi, condition unsatisfactory (recreation, 20 ft high, 30 acre-feet, built 1945, on Tributary To Center Run, private owned).

Inside this ZIP: 1 dam, 0 high-hazard, 1 rated poor: Hoar Pond Dam (low hazard, condition poor).

"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: F3 on 1985-05-31, 29 mi track (1 killed, 20 injured).

23 federal declarations for Licking County since Ohio's first in 1956 (18 major disasters): severe storm 10, flood 4, tornado 3. Latest: Tornadoes (2024).

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

Warnings since 2015 (National Weather Service, Licking County): 23 tornado warnings (2015: 2, 2017: 1, 2018: 2, 2019: 3, 2020: 3, 2024: 8, 2025: 1, 2026: 3), 210 severe thunderstorm warnings, 24 flash flood warnings, 78 flood warnings and 137 flood advisories, 11 winter storm or blizzard warnings, 27 heat warnings or advisories, 6 extreme cold or wind chill warnings, 3 snow squall warnings; 1,072 products in all.

Mitigation grants (FEMA): 9 hazard mitigation projects in Licking County since 1997, worth $1.2 million ($855,826 federal), covering 18 properties; mostly property buyouts, safe rooms, fma or crs plan. Largest: safe rooms for Licking County Ohio, $324,969 (fiscal 2006).

Disaster aid to households: 38 households in this ZIP registered with FEMA after 3 declared disasters; 26 were approved for $37,245 of housing and other-needs help. Registrations by event: severe winter storms, flooding and mudslides (2005): 30; COVID-19 pandemic (2020): 5; severe storms and flooding (2004): 3.

226 severe weather reports for Licking County since 2016 in NOAA's Storm Events log: 130 damaging thunderstorm wind, 41 hail, 31 river and street flooding, 17 flash floods. Largest hail 2 in (Apr 2, 2025); strongest measured gust 64 mph (Mar 14, 2019); 1 death; about $2.7 million in reported damage, the costliest being flash floods on Mar 20, 2020 ($900K). Zone-wide advisories add 51 winter weather, 9 high wind, 8 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

diesel and fuel oil (5), oil and gas brine or crude (2), oils and hydraulic fluid (1)

Largest

about 2,520 gallons of oil crude in 2021, Monroe Twp, into Little Schenck Creek

Reached water

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

By year

2021: 2, 2022: 4, 2023: 2, 2024: 0, 2025: 0, 2026: 0

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

321 producing, 557 plugged or abandoned, the rest drilled but idle, gas storage, orphan, expired permits or unknown

Shale

1 horizontal Utica or Marcellus well (fracked)

Injection

1 Class II injection well (brine and wastewater go down these; plugged injection wells are counted under plugged)

Orphans

31 wells in the state orphan program, unplugged with no solvent owner

Operators

Knox Energy Inc. (122 producing), Diversified Production Llc (26 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 St. Louisville Plant #5 (limestone, sand & gravel, Olen Corp., 385,727 tons sold), 3.9 mi away in Licking County; 0 within 3 miles, 3 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

Amanda silt loam, 6 to 12 percent slopes, eroded; Amanda makes up 100% of the unit, 9% slope

Water

well drained; flooding none, ponding none

Septic

Somewhat limited for a leach field under Ohio's rule (very limited under the national rule)

Basements

Somewhat limited for dwellings with basements

Farmland

Farmland of local importance

Elevation

1,063 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

Nearest state park: Buckeye Lake State Park, 21.4 mi.

Trails: no built named trail crosses this ZIP; nearest is the Ohio to Erie Trail, 9.1 mi from the ZIP's center (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: Buckeye Lake State Park - North Shore at Buckeye Lake State Park, 21.4 mi (0 within 5 miles); fishing access: Fishing Access at Buckeye Lake State Park, 22.8 mi (0 within 5 miles); swim area: Boat Swim Area at Buckeye Lake State Park, 21.6 mi (0 within 5 miles); campground: Campground/Campsite at Woodbury Wildlife Area, 21.5 mi (0 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

456 acres forested/shrub wetland, 260 acres emergent wetland, 146 acres pond. Largest single wetland: 41 acres of freshwater forested/shrub wetland.

Vernal pools: 32 potential high-quality vernal pools covering 27 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 Mohawk Reservoir (Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District), 14 acres, 17.2 mi away; 0 within 10 miles.

Mitigation sites: nearest North Fork Licking river, 3.2 mi away (a permittee-responsible site under an environmental covenant); 2 within 10 miles. These are wetlands and streams built or restored to replace ones filled under Clean Water Act permits.

Assessed wetland: 2 Ohio EPA study wetlands inside this ZIP; nearest Blackjack Rd Front, a mixed shrub swamp of 0.5 acres, 8.2 mi away: ORAM 56 of 100 (category 2), plant community index 63 of 100 (surveyed 2000); 6 within 10 miles. Category 3 wetlands are the state's best and hardest to fill; category 1 are degraded.

On the old maps: USGS topographic maps marked 126 acres of marsh and swamp here, 0.3% of the ZIP (Ohio EPA's digitized topo-map wetlands).

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

6.8%: 1% medium (apartments, small-lot houses), 2% low (houses on larger lots), 4.6% open space (lawns, parks, golf courses, road verges)

Farmland

64%: 44% row crops, 19% pasture and hay

Crops 2025

of 21,500 cropped acres, 43% soybeans, 45% corn, 2% wheat and small grains (plus 1% wheat followed by soybeans, counted under soybeans), 5% hay and alfalfa, 4% vegetables, orchards, fallow and other crops; 9,708 acres of pasture and grass (USDA Cropland Data Layer)

Forest

28%

Water and wetland

0.2% open water, 1.0% wetland

Paved and roofed

1% 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

22% of the ZIP sits under tree canopy

Area

73.5 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

19.8% of adults 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 5.6% a graduate degree; 46.7% stopped at high school or earlier

Ages

26.1% under 18, 18% 65 or older

Race and origin

82.7% white, 7.6% Black, 0.2% Hispanic or Latino, 0% Asian, 9.5% other or two or more races

Born abroad

0% of residents

Veterans

11.5% of adults

Households

2.8 people per household on average; 20% of households are one person living alone, 64% married couples

Who lives here

36% of households include children, 35% someone 65 or over and 9.9% are a senior living alone; of people 15 and over, 61% are married, 26% never married, 10% divorced and 4% widowed

Poverty

7.0% of residents live below the poverty line, 5.0% of children and 15.9% of people 65 and over; the Gini index of income inequality is 0.51 (0 would mean every household earns the same, 1 that one household earns everything). County-wide, the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate is 9.2% (11.1% of children) with a median household income of $86,157 (SAIPE)

Ancestry

most often reported: German 18%, Irish 9%, English 8%

Movers

6.1% of residents lived somewhere else a year earlier

Language

0.5% of households speak limited English

Moving

8,781 people moved into Licking County between the returns they filed in 2022 and 2023 and 8,096 moved out (net +685, 145,795 stayed put); most arrivals came from Franklin, OH (3,838), Fairfield, OH (798), Muskingum, OH (359); most leavers went to Franklin, OH (2,621), Fairfield, OH (801), Muskingum, OH (470) (IRS)

Metro or rural

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

Nonprofits

37 tax-exempt organizations registered to addresses in this ZIP, 1 of them reporting $1 million or more in income; 78% are 501(c)(3) charities and 8% churches or religious groups; largest: American Legion ($1 million), Americas Freedom Lodge ($423,000), Homer Volunteer Fire Department ($373,000) (IRS)

County growth

Licking County went from 178,501 people in April 2020 to 185,564 in July 2025 (+4.0%): 9,316 births, 9,880 deaths and a net +7,253 from migration since 2020; in 2025 alone a net 1,001 moved in from elsewhere in the U.S. and 245 arrived from abroad (Census estimates)

Since 1900

First counted in 1810 with 3,852 people and 38,846 by 1850, Licking County counted 47,070 people in 1900, 70,645 in 1950, 107,799 in 1970, 145,699 in 2000 and 178,501 in 2020; it has never been larger than today (3.9 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 172, Manufacturing 161, Construction 109. 48% of local jobs pay over $3,333 a month, and 58% of residents' jobs do.

Businesses: 72 establishments with 582 employees and $21 million a year in payroll in 2023; most common: construction (11), restaurants and hotels (11), retail (10), other services (10) (ZIP Business Patterns).

Workplace safety (OSHA): 1 inspection of workplaces in this ZIP since 2020 (1 planned); most inspected: Oilers Meat Processing, Llc (1). No worker death investigated since 2015.

County labor market: Licking County's unemployment rate was 3.3% in July 2026 (4.6% a year earlier), with 92,638 people in the labor force and 3,011 looking for work. Employers in the county paid an average of $1,289 a week in the first quarter of 2026 (up 8.5% on the year) to 77,041 workers at 4,027 establishments, employment up 5.5%; the largest private sectors are manufacturing (12,344 jobs, $1,501 a week), transportation and warehousing (8,171 jobs, $928 a week), health care and social assistance (7,971 jobs, $1,118 a week). (BLS)

Working-age residents: 59.5% of people 16 and over here are in the labor force, and 3.2% of the civilian labor force was unemployed, averaged over 2020 to 2024 (Census ACS). Residents' most common occupations: management and business 19%, production 12%, office and administrative support 12%; 13% are self-employed and 15% work for a government.

Federal money: in fiscal 2025 the federal government obligated $1.7 billion in contracts performed in Licking County ($9,460 a resident) and $175 million in grants ($981 a resident) and $1.0 billion in direct payments to people and organizations (USAspending; Social Security, Medicare and most benefits are not counted).

County economy: Licking County produced $8.5 billion of real GDP in 2024 (2017 dollars, up 23.5% since 2019); personal income came to $61,466 a person in 2024, 24th of Ohio's 88 counties and up 31% since 2019 before inflation (BEA).

County type (USDA ERS, 2015 codes): Licking County is a metro county with a nonspecialized economy, with none of the ERS distress flags.

How they get there: 78.7% drive alone, 6.1% carpool, 0% transit, 3.1% walk, 0% bike, 10.3% work from home (ACS).

Where residents work: 5% inside this ZIP; 15% in Newark (43055), 8% in Mount Vernon (43050), 4% in Johnstown (43031) (shares of the 2,296 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

1.43% of those children were in jail or prison on census day 2010

Coverage

100% 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

49th percentile: poverty, unemployment, housing cost burden, no high school diploma, no health insurance

Household characteristics

60th: people 65 and over or 17 and under, disability, single-parent households, limited English

Racial and ethnic minority status

25th

Housing and transportation

52nd: 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 38.4%, no leisure-time physical activity 25.4%

Chronic conditions

diabetes 13.1%, high blood pressure 37.0%, COPD 8.4%, cancer (any but non-melanoma skin cancer) 9.5%

Habits

current smoking 16.8%, binge drinking 16.3%, short sleep 36.3%

Mind

depression 26.4%, frequent mental distress 17.6%, feeling lonely 33.8%

Access

uninsured under 65 7.2%, yearly checkup 78.7%, dental visit 64.1%

Hardship

any disability 29.9%, food insecurity 11.7%

Heart and lungs

current asthma 11.0%, coronary heart disease 7.4%, stroke 3.6%, arthritis 31.4%

Keeping up

79.1% of adults with high blood pressure take medicine for it, 86.0% had a cholesterol check in 5 years

Social needs

housing insecurity 9.7%, no reliable transportation 6.7%, utility shut-off threat 7.0%, lacking emotional support 20.3%

Provider shortage

100% live in a designated primary care shortage area (score 13 of 25); 26% live in an area HRSA designates a dental shortage area for its low-income residents (score 13 of 26); 100% live in a designated mental health shortage area (score 13 of 25) (HRSA; higher scores mean greater need)

Coverage (Census)

7.1% of residents have no health insurance (8.0% of children); 20% are on Medicaid and 44% have coverage through an employer

Disability (Census)

14.6% of residents report a disability, 35% of those 65 and over

County (County Health Rankings 2025): Licking County sits in health group 4 of 10 among U.S. counties for population health (1 is healthiest) and group 3 for community conditions. Premature death 8,469 (Ohio 9,740) years of life lost before 75 per 100,000; one primary care doctor for every 2,693 people (Ohio 1,328), one mental health provider for every 605 people (Ohio 286), one dentist for every 2,628 people (Ohio 1,535); preventable hospital stays 3,012 (Ohio 3,033) per 100,000 Medicare enrollees; injury deaths 85.8 (Ohio 100.7) and suicides 15.6 (Ohio 14.7) per 100,000; infant deaths 6.1 (Ohio 7.0) per 1,000 births; teen births 14.1 (Ohio 17.4) per 1,000 girls 15 to 19; children in poverty 11.9 (Ohio 17.5) percent; fine-particle air pollution 8.3 (Ohio 7.8) micrograms per cubic metre; no community water system in the county had a health-based drinking water violation in 2023. Drug overdoses: 27 deaths in the 12 months ending December 2025 (34 a year earlier, 80 at the highest since 2020, in the 12 months ending March 2022), about 14.7 per 100,000 residents against 20.8 statewide (CDC provisional counts).

Cancer (NCI State Cancer Profiles): Licking County records 511.9 new cancers a year per 100,000 people, age-adjusted, for 2018 to 2022 (Ohio 472.9, U.S. 448.6), about 1,152 cases a year, with the rate stable; cancer deaths 165.7 per 100,000 (Ohio 160.3, U.S. 145.4), falling. By site, per 100,000 (Ohio in parentheses): lung 71.9 (63.6), colorectal 40.2 (38.4), female breast 148.4 (133), prostate 130.5 (120.8), bladder 22.3 (21.8), leukemia 14 (13).

Medicare: 38,391 people in Licking County were on Medicare in 2025 (21% of residents): 34,329 aged 65 or over and 4,062 younger people with disabilities. 57% chose a Medicare Advantage plan, 12% also had Medicaid and 83% had Part D drug coverage; enrollment is up 8% 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

117 beds · no trauma designation listed · 0 general or critical-access hospitals within 10 miles, 2 within 25.

Medicare rating: ★★★☆☆ · emergency room: yes · typical ER visit 198 minutes door to discharge (Ohio median 155)

Patients' verdict: 65% would definitely recommend it, 73% rated their stay 9 or 10 out of 10 (★★★☆☆ patient-experience rating, 349 surveys).

Outcomes: 30-day death rates after heart failure 12.7% (about the national rate), heart attack 13.3% (about the national rate), pneumonia 19% (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 Behavioral Health of Mount Vernon Health Center, Mount Vernon, 10.8 mi away; 0 within 3 miles, 0 within 10. These federally funded clinics see anyone and charge on a sliding scale.

Veterans: nearest VA site is Daniel L. Kinnard VA Clinic, Newark (multi-specialty outpatient clinic), 13.9 mi away; 0 VA sites within 10 miles, 1 within 25.

Providers: 38 active health care providers list a practice address in this ZIP: 2 physicians, 2 pharmacies, 1 nursing or assisted-living facility, 4 home health or hospice agencies; most common physician specialties: Pediatrics (1), Internal Medicine (1) (NPPES registry, August 2026).

Dialysis: nearest Fmc - Knox County Kidney Center, Mount Vernon, 10.8 mi away, 14 stations, Medicare ★★★★☆ (Fresenius Medical Care); 0 within 5 miles, 4 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, 14 within 15.

Medicare rating

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

Beds

75 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

0 offenses: 0 murders, 0 rapes, 0 robberies, 0 aggravated assaults (0.0 per 1,000 residents; Ohio 3.2)

Property

2 offenses: 1 burglary, 1 theft, 0 vehicle thefts (0.9 per 1,000; Ohio 16.9)

Other

7 simple assaults, 1 vandalism report, 3 drug offenses, 2 weapons violations

Reporting

12 months of 2024 on file; 2,130 residents served; this department covers the 39% of the ZIP's residents in its territory, the rest fall under others

Trend

violent offenses down 100% from 3 in 2023; property down 71% from 7

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, 1 within 8. Inside this ZIP: Utica Police Department.

Nearest post office: Utica Post Office, 1 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, 5 within 8.

Inside this ZIP: Utica Volunteer Fire Department; Homer Fire District - Station 471.

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

1 library within 3 miles, 2 within 8.

Open

about 35 hours a week

Building

2,212 square feet

Licking County Library

6 buildings, serves 118K people, 1.8 visits per resident a year, 944K items lent, 1,160 programs, $6.9M annual income

Inside this ZIP: Homer Public Library; Utica Branch Library.

Museums: 2 inside this ZIP (Utica Historical Society, Velvet Ice Cream Company Museum & Milling Museum); nearest Utica Historical Society, Utica, 0.1 mi away; 2 within 5 miles, 23 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, 85% more than 1 mile, 3% more than 10 miles

Without a car

50% live in a tract flagged for low income and low vehicle access; 5.5% of households have no vehicle (Census ACS 2020 to 2024)

Poverty

15.4% of residents below the poverty line

SNAP stores

no supermarket or grocery store inside this ZIP take SNAP, alongside 2 convenience stores, 1 farmers market, 1 other outlet (dollar, drug and discount stores); nearest supermarket or grocery store Glenn's Market (grocery store), 9 mi from the ZIP's center, and the nearest supermarket or superstore Lanning's Foods, 9.2 mi; 0 supermarkets and grocery stores within 3 miles (USDA, 2026)

SNAP households

16% of households received SNAP benefits in the past year (Census ACS 2020 to 2024)

Setting

0% of residents in urban tracts, across 4 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

Utica 39% Burlington Township 16% Washington Township 12%

Before the settlers

The 1881 county history says that by the time this area was first settled, 'the Indians had generally moved further north and west,' and that 'the pioneers made the acquaintance of but few of them,' with peaceful relations the norm. One documented exception is grim: the source records the killing of an unnamed Native woman two miles east of Utica, at a place it calls 'Squawtown,' after a group of men including one surnamed McLean and one surnamed Hughes (not Elias Hughes) played a card game to decide who would shoot her. McLean was convicted and sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary; accounts differ on whether he was pardoned shortly before his term ended or died in prison, but the source records him telling an official, 'I am innocent, but I have suffered; one is enough to suffer, and I decline to tell,' when pressed to name the guilty party. A stone mound of Mound Builder origin, unrelated to this event, stands two miles south of the village. No source consulted identifies the nation of the woman killed at Squawtown, or gives a precise date for the killing beyond the general period of the village's earliest settlement.

• "Squawtown" other · two miles east of Utica · early settlement period, likely 1810s source
• Stone mound south of Utica mound · near the residence of Eli Smoots, two miles south of Utica · prehistoric (Mound Builder) source

Licking County

No county in Ohio carries a heavier concentration of Native American history than Licking County, and its record begins with stone. Flint Ridge, a vein of unusually colorful, glass-hard Vanport flint exposed along a ridge on the Licking-Muskingum county line in Hopewell Township, was quarried by Native people for more than 10,000 years; hundreds of shallow pits, some over 20 feet deep and covering more than a hundred acres, still mark the ridge. Colonel Charles Whittlesey, Dr. S. P. Hildreth (in an 1838 report to the Ohio legislature) and antiquarian Caleb Atwater (1818) independently… 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 Utica began

Utica grew from a cabin and log mill that brothers William and James Robertson built in 1810 on the North Fork of the Licking, near the Knox County line. Major Robertson laid out the village in 1815 under the name Wilmington; around 1820, needing a distinct name for a post office, the settlement became Utica, likely echoing Utica, New York, though the county's own 1881 history does not explain the choice. Scotch-Irish settlers from the north of Ireland's descendants filled in the surrounding farms, and in 1914 a Lebanese immigrant, Joseph Dager, began making ice cream in a Utica confectionary's basement, a business that grew into Velvet Ice Cream and, since 1960, has run its headquarters and museum from Ye Olde Mill just south of the village. The area's darker pioneer record includes the unsolved 'Squawtown' killing of a Native woman on a wager, recorded soberly by the 1881 county historian as a crime of its own era.

Settled 1810 (William and James Robertson build a cabin and log mill on the site), platted 1815; by Major William Robertson. source

The name. The village was first named Wilmington when Major Robertson laid it out in 1815. The 1881 county history records only that 'when they applied for a post office, about 1820, it became necessary to change the name, and Utica was adopted,' without explaining why that particular name was chosen; Wikipedia's article on the village states it was named after Utica, New York, a common pattern among Ohio towns settled from the east, but this is not confirmed in the nineteenth-century source. source

Timeline12

• 1808The first permanent settlers arrive in what becomes Washington Township, around the future site of Utica. source
• 1810William and James Robertson purchase the land on which Utica now stands, build a cabin and a log mill on the site of the present mill, with millwright work by pioneer James King. source
• 1812Washington Township is organized. source
• 1815Major William Robertson lays out the village, first named Wilmington. source
• October 5, 1818The Presbyterian church of Utica is organized, with Rev. James Cunningham as its first pastor. source
• c. 1820The village is renamed Utica so it can have its own post office; Richard Lamson becomes the first postmaster. source
• 1844Elias Hughes, one of the first two permanent white settlers of Licking County in 1798, dies in Utica at about age ninety, having lived his last years with his son Jonathan. source
• August 1880Utica's fire department is organized. source
• 1914Joseph Dager, a Lebanese immigrant, founds what becomes Velvet Ice Cream in the basement of a Utica confectionary. source
• 1960Velvet Ice Cream moves its operations to Ye Olde Mill, a mill site one mile south of the company's original location. source
• 1974Ye Olde Mill begins hosting an annual ice cream festival each Memorial Day, later known as the Old Fashioned Ice Cream Festival. source
• March 22, 1991The Fuller House, built in 1826 at 203 N. Main Street, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. source

Stories

Wilmington Becomes Utica

William and James Robertson bought the land where Utica now sits in 1810 and put up a cabin and a log mill, the millwright work done by an eccentric Irish pioneer named James King. Major Robertson laid the village out five years later, in 1815, and called it Wilmington. The name lasted only until the settlement wanted its own post office around 1820; since another Ohio post office already answered to Wilmington, the village took a new name, Utica, for reasons the county's own 1881 historian did not think worth recording. Richard Lamson, known locally as 'Esquire' Lamson, became the first postmaster and ran the village's first hotel, in whose bar-room a Mr. Messenger opened the first stock of dry goods ever sold in Utica. source

The Tragedy at Squawtown

The 1881 county history, generally a chronicle of mills, churches and first settlers, sets aside a paragraph for one act of violence it plainly finds shameful. Two miles east of Utica, at a place remembered afterward only as 'Squawtown,' a group of men that included one surnamed McLean and one surnamed Hughes played a card game to decide which of them would shoot a Native woman living nearby. McLean was tried, found guilty and sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary. The record of what happened next is uncertain: some said he was pardoned shortly before his sentence ended and died soon after; others said he died still in prison. One account has a prison official pressing him, on his way out, to name his accomplices, to which McLean is said to have answered, 'I am innocent, but I have suffered; one is enough to suffer, and I decline to tell.' No name for the woman he was convicted of killing survives in the sources consulted for this file. source

From a Confectionery Basement to Ye Olde Mill

Joseph Dager, a Lebanese immigrant, started making ice cream in the basement of a Utica confectionary in 1914. The business that grew from it, Velvet Ice Cream, stayed in the family for generations, and in 1960 it moved a mile south of its original site to Ye Olde Mill, a park-like property that today combines the company's headquarters with an ice cream museum, a visitor center and a working ice cream shop drawing more than 150,000 visitors a year. Since 1974, Ye Olde Mill has hosted an ice cream festival every Memorial Day, and by 2015 the company was investing millions in a new distribution center, still run by descendants of the Dager family who started it all in a basement. source

Not found: No source consulted gives a precise date for the Squawtown killing, the name of the victim, or her nation; the event is placed only within the village's general early settlement period. No incorporation date for the village was found. The exact reason 'Utica' was chosen over other names is not explained in the 1881 county history, which is otherwise the most detailed source available; Wikipedia's claim that it echoes Utica, New York, is plausible but unconfirmed by a primary source. (confidence high)

Licking County

Licking County was organized out of Fairfield County by an act of the Ohio General Assembly passed January 30, 1808, effective March 1, 1808, and named for the Licking River and the salt licks along it that had drawn game, Native travelers and, in 1798, the county's first white settlers. Its seat, Newark, was platted in 1802 by General William C. Schenck at the forks of the Licking, and the county grew around the Ohio and Erie Canal (broken ground at Licking Summit on July 4, 1825), the National Road, its railroads, and industries in glass, stoves, baskets and fiberglass. Licking County holds the richest concentration of Native American earthworks anywhere in Ohio: the Hopewell culture's Newark Earthworks, the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures ever built, whose surviving Octagon and Great Circle were inscribed, together with Flint Ridge's ten-thousand-year-old flint quarries and Granville's Alligator effigy mound nearby, into a landscape that in September 2023 became part of Ohio's first UNESCO World Heritage Site. The county has since drawn Denison University, the Dawes Arboretum, Owens Corning's fiberglass works, and, in the twenty-first century, Intel's multi-billion-dollar chip campus on its western edge near New Albany.

Settled 1798 (Elias Hughes and John Ratliff settle on the Bowling Green, on the Licking River in present Madison Township, the first permanent white settlement in the county), platted 1802 (Newark platted by Gen. William C. Schenck at the forks of the Licking River; the plat was recorded at the Fairfield County recorder's office on March 16, 1803), incorporated 1808-01-30 (act passed by the Ohio General Assembly); 1808-03-01 (effective date, county organized out of Fairfield County); by Ohio General Assembly; first officers, 1808: William Wilson, president judge of the court of common pleas; Alexander Holmes, Timothy Rose and James Taylor, associate judges; Samuel Bancroft, clerk; John Stadden, sheriff; Elias Gilman, treasurer; Archibald Wilson, Elisha Wells and Israel Wells, commissioners. source

The name. Licking County and its river take their name from the salt licks along the Licking's banks, which drew game and, by the 1770s, Native travelers and white explorers alike; Rev. David Jones's 1773 journal already calls the stream 'Salt Lick Creek.' Some scholars offer an alternate origin, deriving 'Licking' from a Lenape (Delaware) phrase meaning roughly 'where the flood waters recede.' Either way, the name predated the county by decades and was simply carried over when the legislature organized it in 1808.

The county seat. Newark was platted in 1802 by Gen. William C. Schenck, a Warren County surveyor who came to the forks of the Licking to survey military-district land and, finding the spot promising, laid out a town and named it for his birthplace, Newark, New Jersey; the plat was recorded in March 1803, while the area was still part of Fairfield County. When Licking County organized in 1808, commissioners James Dunlap, Isaac Cook and James Armstrong selected Newark as permanent county seat over its only rival, Granville; the first court, held that year, convened in the house of Levi Hays, four miles west of Newark, because no courthouse yet existed - and the grand jury, finding no room indoors, held its inquest under a tree.

Timeline23

• 1798Elias Hughes and John Ratliff, with their families, become the first permanent white settlers in the future county, squatting on the Bowling Green on the Licking River. source
• 1801/1802Welsh emigrants buy 2,000 acres in future Granville Township and build the first Welsh Hills cabins in 1802, the year Gen. William C. Schenck plats Newark at the forks of the Licking. source
• 1804-1805Massachusetts subscribers form the Licking Land Company on April 23, 1804, to settle a colony in Ohio; its advance party reaches Granville on November 2, 1805, and 45 families arrive by winter. source
• 1807Wyandot residents sell their village of Raccoontown, on Raccoon Creek near Johnstown, to settlers and abandon it; a remnant Wyandot presence on the Brushy Fork persists until 1812. source
• 1825-07-04Ground is broken for the Ohio and Erie Canal at Licking Summit, with Governor DeWitt Clinton turning the first spadeful; a dike built there through 1830 creates the reservoir later named Buckeye Lake. source
• 1828The Black Hand petroglyph at the Licking Narrows is destroyed when its rock face is blasted away to build the canal towpath. source
• 1831-12-13Classes begin at the Granville Literary and Theological Institution, chartered by Ohio Baptists; it becomes Granville College in 1845 and Denison University in 1853. source
• 1832-1834The National Road is surveyed and built across the county's northern townships; the town of Carthage (later Etna) is laid out on its line in 1832 and the road is finished to that point by 1833-34. source
• 1855/1857Newark is connected by rail on the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (April 1855) and, westward to Columbus, on the Central Ohio Railroad (April 1857). source
• 1860David Wyrick finds the inscribed 'Keystone' near Newark in June and the 'Decalogue Stone' in a burial mound that November, artifacts later shown to be a forgery known as the Newark Holy Stones. source
• 1883/1885James Moser founds an iron foundry in East Newark that, with Joseph Wehrle's 1885 partnership, becomes the Wehrle stove works, later one of the city's largest employers. source
• 1894The state renames the Licking Summit Reservoir 'Buckeye Lake' and begins developing it as a recreational resort. source
• 1895The A. H. Heisey Glass Company begins operations in Newark, a business that runs until 1957. source
• 1910The Octagon Earthworks are leased to the newly formed Moundbuilders Country Club, which builds a golf course over the ancient enclosure. source
• 1913-03The regional Great Flood of 1913 swells the Licking River and floods Newark and the surrounding valley, part of a disaster that struck rivers across Ohio between March 23 and 26. source
• 1929-06-01Beman and Bertie Dawes formally establish the Dawes Arboretum near Newark, built out from their 140-acre 'Daweswood' farm. source
• 1938Owens Corning Fiberglas Corporation is formed from a joint venture of Owens-Illinois and Corning Glass Works; its Case Avenue plant in Newark becomes one of the company's first fiberglass manufacturing sites. source
• 1962The Air Force guidance and metrology facility in Heath is formally named Newark Air Force Station; redesignated Newark Air Force Base in 1987, it continues today as an Air Force metrology and calibration center. source
• 1975Black Hand Gorge, on the Licking River east of Newark, becomes an Ohio State Nature Preserve. source
• 2022-01-21Intel announces an initial investment of more than $28 billion to build two computer-chip factories on nearly 1,000 acres in Licking County near New Albany. source
• 2022-12-07The Ohio Supreme Court rules that Ohio History Connection may use eminent domain to reclaim the Octagon Earthworks from the Moundbuilders Country Club. source
• 2023-09-19UNESCO inscribes the Octagon and Great Circle Earthworks, with six other Hopewell-culture sites, as the 'Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks' - Ohio's first World Heritage Site. source
• 2025-01-01The Octagon Earthworks open to full, unrestricted public access for the first time since 1910, after the Moundbuilders Country Club's departure. source

County stories

The Canal's First Spadeful

On July 4, 1825, thousands converged on a muddy field at Licking Summit, four miles south of Newark, to watch the state break ground on the Ohio and Erie Canal, under booths hastily built in the woods after days of rain. New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, builder of the Erie Canal, took the ceremonial spade first and raised the first shovelful of earth to wild cheering; Ohio's own Governor Jeremiah Morrow followed, then a militia captain from Chillicothe wheeled the full barrow to the bank himself while the crowd, by one account, shouted itself hoarse and wept. Antiquarian Caleb Atwater, watching cavalry horses stamp at the flies before the speakers' stand, remarked that it was just as well to put the horses there, 'for they cannot read, and we can.' Laborers who dug the canal afterward earned eight dollars for twenty-six days' work, sunrise to sunset, and drew regular rations of whiskey until commissioners Micajah Williams and Alfred Kelley, alarmed at the toll of four daily 'jiggers' apiece, ordered contractors to stop supplying it or forfeit their pay. source

The Welsh of the Hills

In 1801, Thomas Phillips and Theophilus Rees, two Welsh-born men of means living among fellow Welsh emigrants in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, sent scouts to inspect 2,000 acres of Ohio land they were considering, sight unseen, in what became northeastern Granville Township. Satisfied, they bought the tract from a Welsh land dealer in Philadelphia, and in 1801 and 1802 a small vanguard - David Lewis, David Thomas, Rees himself, his son-in-law Simon James, and a frontiersman named Jimmy Johnson picked up along the road near Wheeling - built the first cabins on what settlers called the Welsh Hills. Rees, a scholar who never fully mastered English, became the settlement's patriarch, walking to services in nearby Granville after the New England colony arrived there in 1805 until his countrymen organized the Welsh Hills church in 1808. More Welsh families followed, planting a community whose language lingered in the hills for a generation and whose place names still mark the townships around Granville today. source

Flint Ridge, the Great Indian Quarry

Long before any county existed here, Native toolmakers were digging into a ridge of glassy, rainbow-colored chert running some eight miles along the Licking-Muskingum line, leaving hundreds of pits, some cut twenty feet into the rock, across more than a hundred acres. Colonel Charles Whittlesey, examining the ridge in the nineteenth century, found the old pits still holding water and surrounded by rejected, flawed stone, discarded by workers who kept only the clearest pieces for knives and arrowheads; Dr. S. P. Hildreth, reporting to the Ohio legislature in 1838, and Caleb Atwater, writing as early as 1818, both marveled at the scale of the digging and agreed it could only have been done to reach fresh, workable stone beneath the weathered surface. No one studying the ridge in the 1800s could say what tools the ancient quarriers had used, or how long the work went on; archaeology has since shown the answer was more than 10,000 years, with Hopewell-era artisans especially prizing the ridge's flint and carrying it into a trade network reaching Kansas City and the Gulf of Mexico. The state protected the ridge as Flint Ridge State Memorial in 1933, and a museum today stands built directly over one of the ancient pits. source

The Octagon and the Moon

For more than a century, most visitors to the Octagon Earthworks in Newark saw it as a golf course rather than a monument: the Moundbuilders Country Club leased the enclosure in 1910 and built its links across the fifty-acre octagon and its Observatory Circle, renewing the lease in 1997 through 2078. Yet in 1982, Earlham College researchers Ray Hively and Robert Horn showed that the earthwork's walls and gateways were laid out to track all eight rise and set points of the moon across its 18.6-year cycle, the extreme northern moonrise aligning, from the Observatory Mound, within half a degree of the earthwork's own center - a feat one researcher found twice as precise as the solstice alignments at Stonehenge. As Ohio History Connection worked toward UNESCO recognition, it moved to buy out the club's lease through eminent domain, a fight the Ohio Supreme Court settled in the History Connection's favor on December 7, 2022, comparing the site to Stonehenge or Machu Picchu. After further appeals failed, the sides settled in August 2024, the golfers departed, and on January 1, 2025, anyone could walk the full octagon and watch, unobstructed, for the moonrise its builders once tracked so precisely. source

The Newark Holy Stones

In June 1860, David Wyrick, a Newark surveyor convinced that American Indians descended from the lost tribes of Israel, announced he had found a small stone near the city's earthworks bearing Hebrew inscriptions reading 'Holy of Holies' and 'King of the Earth.' That November, digging inside a burial vault south of town, he produced a far more elaborate find: a sandstone box holding a smaller stone carved with a robed, turbaned figure labeled Moses and a compressed Hebrew rendering of the Ten Commandments. The finds seemed, to those who wanted to believe it, to settle a heated debate of the era over whether all races of humanity shared one common origin. The case did not hold up: scholar Abraham Geiger told the New York Times within weeks that the lettering looked distinctly modern, and later researchers, comparing Wyrick's published copies against the stones, counted dozens of transcription errors too large to be innocent. Ohio Historical Society curator Bradley Lepper traced the Decalogue Stone's central image to an 1849 illustrated volume on the ruins of Nineveh circulating in Ohio at the time, evidence, he argues, that someone manufactured the stones and planted them to be found. The stones are on display today at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, a lesson in how a genuine archaeological landscape could be pressed into a story its builders never told. source

Black Hand Gorge, Erased for a Canal

Early hunters and settlers who pushed through the dark half-mile gorge where the Licking cuts through sixty-foot sandstone cliffs east of Newark called it Black Hand Narrows, for a carving on an overhanging rock: a human hand and wrist, roughly double life size, thumb and fingers spread and pointing east, chiseled into the stone and darkened by weather. N. N. Hill's 1881 county history, drawing on early travelers' memories, describes the carving as a landmark everyone in the valley once knew - and records its loss: when the Ohio Canal turned the Narrows into a slack-water channel, engineers blasted away the very rock bearing the hand to make room for the towpath, a destruction Hill calls 'much to be regretted' even as he treats it as simply the price of progress. Other carvings nearby survived that first round only to be dynamited in 1890 for an electric interurban line. Nothing of the petroglyph remains today, but the gorge, protected since 1975 as Black Hand Gorge State Nature Preserve, still runs for miles along the Licking, a reminder of what nineteenth-century Ohio was willing to destroy for transportation. source

Buckeye Lake's Resort Years

The reservoir canal engineers diked into being between 1826 and 1830 to feed the Ohio and Erie Canal outlived the canal traffic it was built for by decades. In 1894 the state renamed it 'Buckeye Lake' and began developing it for recreation; interurban trolleys brought excursionists starting in 1902, and by the 1910s promoters called it 'Ohio's Inland Seashore' and the 'Atlantic City of the Middle West,' with hotels, a skating rink and amusement rides crowding its shore. The park came into its own in 1931 with the Dips, a wooden roller coaster anchoring a resort drawing as many as 50,000 visitors a day by the 1940s to its Crystal Pool and dance-hall bands. The Dips wrecked in 1958, and the park closed for good in 1970. The lake remained, becoming an Ohio state park in 1949 and, after a 2015 inspection found its dam unsound, the subject of a $107 million reconstruction finished under budget in November 2018 - proof the old canal reservoir outlasted its own resort heyday. source

Sources: archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · ohiohistory.org · courtnewsohio.gov · nps.gov · publications.newberry.org · newsroom.intel.com · theclio.com · pioneermillworks.com · buyinsulationproductstore.com · ia601606.us.archive.org. 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

• Fuller House (building)

Place names (USGS): 4 named communities (Pattons Corners, Homer, Morgan Center, Utica); 9 named streams end here (East Branch Rocky Fork, Otter Fork Licking River, Sycamore Creek, Chambers Creek and more); 3 named lakes or reservoirs (Smoot Lake, Prairie Lake (historical), Hoar Pond). 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

• North Fork Local77% of residentsLocal school district
• Northridge Local19% of residentsLocal school district
• East Knox Local4% 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: North Fork Online Academy; Utica Elementary School (3.5 stars); Utica High School (2.5 stars); Utica Middle School (3.5 stars). Nearest to the population center: Utica Elementary School (3.5 stars), 0.5 mi; 4 within a mile, 4 within 3.

Enrolled here: 1,128 students attend the 3 public schools inside this ZIP with 2023-24 enrollment on file; 14.4 students per teacher. 72% of the 698 students at the 2 schools reporting it qualify for free or reduced-price meals (1 did not report). 1 online school with 5 students statewide lists an office here. (NCES)

Enrollment: 1,009 residents attend kindergarten through 12th grade, 11% of them at private schools; 86 are in college or graduate school (Census ACS 2020 to 2024).

Money, fiscal 2023: North Fork Local took in $24 million, 39% from the state, 49% local and 13% federal, and spent $14,292 per pupil on day-to-day operations for 1,515 students, 60% of it on instruction; capital outlay $0.4 million (Census school finance survey via NCES).

Child poverty: the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate puts 8.6% of North Fork Local's school-age children below the poverty line (169 of 1,971 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 3 stars, progress 2 stars, gap closing 2 stars, early literacy 2 stars, graduation 3 stars, college and career readiness 2 stars

Achievement

performance index 74.7% of ODE's maximum score for the year (the average of the top 2% of district scores, not the highest score possible) (score 82, 82.6 the year before)

Graduation

92.4% of the class of 2024 graduated in four years; 60.5% of that class (graduates or not) showed college, career, workforce or military readiness

Spending

$12,570 per pupil in 2023-24 against $12,759 statewide

Teachers

average salary $65,236, 17 years of experience, 58.7% with a master's degree, 6.6% in their first years of teaching

Enrollment

1,436 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

Mount Vernon Nazarene University is a private nonprofit college with 2,615 students over the 2023-24 year; published tuition and fees $35,524 a year; 64% of a 330-student entering class graduated (six-year bachelor).

4 institutions within 10 miles, 8 within 25.

Next nearest: Kenyon College (9.5 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

• Utica (village)39% of residentsVillage
• Burlington Township, Licking County16% of residentsTownship
• Morgan Township, Knox County13% of residentsTownship
• Washington Township, Licking County12% of residentsTownship
• Clay Township, Knox County11% of residentsTownship
• Eden Township, Licking County4% of residentsTownship
• Bennington Township, Licking 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-12Zanesville · since 2018 · site
• Tim Schaffer ROhio Senate 20 · 74%Lancaster · since 2019 · site
• Andrew O. Brenner R 19 · 26%Delaware · since 2018 · site
• Kevin D. Miller ROhio House 69 · 74%Newark · since 2021 · site
• Mark Hiner R 98 · 26%Howard · since 2024 · 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