ZIP code 43130: Lancaster

Drinking-water compliance

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

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

Byproducts and contaminants

TTHM

26 µg/L yearly mean in 2019, the last year in the file (limit 80); worst yearly mean 41.9, highest single sample 47.2; 39 samples from 2012 to 2019

HAA5

6 µg/L yearly mean in the last year sampled (limit 60); worst yearly mean 11.5, highest sample 12.8; 39 samples

Plants

Lancaster City runs 2 plants and EPA's file lumps their entry-point samples under one system, so the nitrate, arsenic, radioactivity, solvent, farm-chemical and metal rows cover all 2, not only Miller Park (North) Water Treatment Plant, which serves this ZIP; a sample over a limit may be from another plant

Nitrate

highest of 16 samples was 0.28 mg/L as nitrogen (2012; limit 10); 0 in 2019, the last year sampled. Nitrate above 10 is unsafe for infants

Arsenic

highest of 4 samples was 6.1 µg/L (limit 10); detections averaged 6.1

Radioactivity

highest results: combined radium 0 pCi/L (limit 5)

Solvents and fuels

benzene, carbon tetrachloride, 1,2-dichloroethane, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, vinyl chloride not detected in 4 samples

Bacteria

3 of 3,659 routine tap samples (0.08%) tested positive for total coliform in 2012 to 2019, 1 of 486 in 2019; E. coli never found in the 3 tap samples tested for it. Coliform itself is a warning sign; E. coli means sewage or manure reached the water

Farm chemicals

atrazine, alachlor not detected in 4 samples

Metals

barium in 4 of 4 samples, highest 119 µg/L (limit 2,000); chromium, cadmium, mercury, selenium, thallium not detected in 4 samples

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

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

PFAS

UCMR 5, all plants

7 samples in 2023 at the entry point to the distribution system: none of the 29 PFAS detected

Treatment

membrane filtration, reverse osmosis or nanofiltration reported for PFAS

Ohio EPA 2020

2 plants tested (latest 2020-08): nothing detected for the six PFAS tested

Ohio EPA latest

3 plants sampled by Ohio EPA, most recently 2026-05 (Ohio EPA statewide sampling status map)

Firefighting foam: 2 fire departments or other holders in Fairfield County registered 85 gallons of PFAS-based AFFF foam with Ohio EPA, 10 gallons in opened containers; the state is collecting it for disposal so it is never sprayed again.

Lithium: found in 2 of 4 UCMR 5 samples at Lancaster City, highest 12.2 µg/L (detections averaged 12), last sampled 2023. Lithium is unregulated; EPA's draft health reference level is 10 µg/L, and it occurs naturally in deep groundwater, so well systems in the northwest run highest.

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

Source: EPA UCMR 5 occurrence data (final release, August 2026) and Ohio EPA statewide PFAS sampling 2019 to 2021 and its current status map, for the system that serves most of this ZIP; EPA SDWIS record OH2301012; results in nanograms per litre (parts per trillion) · Ohio EPA PFAS

Lead at the tap

Latest period

0.8 ppb in the sampling period ending 2025-06

Highest since 2016

1.9 ppb (2021-12); never above 10 ppb in 9 periods

Service lines

15,856 inventoried: 0 lead, 2,349 galvanized needing replacement, 3,450 unknown, 10,057 not lead (reported all required service line types)

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: 38% of the homes here were built before 1960 and 20% before 1940, when lead service lines, lead solder and lead paint were common; 65% predate 1980 (Census ACS 2020 to 2024).

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

Source: EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System lead and copper 90th-percentile results (Envirofacts) and EPA's service line inventory dashboard (2026 Q2), for Lancaster City (OH2301012), the system that serves most of this ZIP · ODH childhood lead testing · ODH high-risk ZIP list (CCBH PDF) · Ohio EPA lead and copper · H2Ohio

Fluoride and treatment

Treatment on file: aeration, corrosion control, cartridge filtration, coagulation and settling, chlorine disinfection, iron and manganese removal, ion-exchange softening, reverse osmosis, sand or media filtration.

The health department reports 0.26 mg/L of natural fluoride for Lancaster City, below the 0.7 mg/L target.

Measured fluoride: 0.24 mg/L on average at the plant's entry points in 2017 (too little to protect teeth), with 1 of that year's samples below the 0.2 mg/L reporting limit and left out of the average; samples ran from 0.24 to 0.28 mg/L across 4 samples in 2012 to 2019 (EPA compliance monitoring). Natural fluoride in Ohio well water runs from a trace to over 2 mg/L in parts of the northwest.

The health department counts 48.6% of Fairfield County residents on community water as receiving fluoridated water.

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

Source: CDC My Water's Fluoride, fluoridation status of each system as reported by the Ohio Department of Health; EPA Safe Drinking Water Information System treatment table for Lancaster City (OH2301012); 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

Lancaster City draws groundwater, which Ohio does not monitor for algal toxins; blooms are a surface-water problem.

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

sand and gravel with fine layers, part of the Hocking Buried Valley Aquifer (buried valley setting); wells there yield > 500 gallons a minute, deposits > 100 ft thick

Bedrock

Cuyahoga Group, yielding 5 - 25 gpm to a well

Setting

Sand and Gravel; water table 5-15 ft down, 7-10 in/yr recharge, silt loam soil (hydrogeologic setting 7D); pesticide index 195

Karst

363 karst and spring points in ODNR's inventory inside the ZIP (0 field-verified), 2.2 per square mile

Well logs

6,099 drilled wells on file (98.4 per 1,000 residents), median 115 ft deep, 15 gallons a minute median test yield, water 48 ft down

Aquifers

74% of wells in bedrock, 26% in sand, gravel and other unconsolidated material; typical well drilled 1992, 2,136 since 2000; uses: Domestic 5,114, Monitor 240

Wellhead protection

3% of this ZIP lies inside Ohio EPA source water protection areas for 29 public water systems (Lancaster City PWS, Odrc-Southeastern Correctional Institute, Sugar Grove Village PWS), 1% inside inner management zones, the ground a well draws from within a year; the largest, Lancaster City PWS, is rated high susceptibility in a buried valley setting

Geology

61% of the ZIP is a sensitive geologic setting, where thin or sandy cover leaves the aquifer open to what soaks in from the surface (Ohio EPA and ODNR Geological Survey)

Injection wells

118 Class V injection wells on Ohio EPA's books inside this ZIP (49 active): 30 large septic, 74 cleanup injection, 11 vehicle waste, 3 other; these put fluids underground above or into drinking water aquifers

Urban setting

1 Ohio EPA Urban Setting Designation area touches this ZIP (East Lancaster Development Corridor): a finding that groundwater there is not used for drinking, which lets contaminated sites close without cleaning the aquifer to drinking standards

Water table

F-6 OH monitoring well (ODNR), 0.2 mi away: water 12.2 ft below ground on 2026-07-22; averaged 11 ft in 2015 to 2019 and 15.1 ft over the latest year, so the table is running about 4.1 ft lower; range 6.2 to 22.5 ft over 4,180 readings since 2015

Nitrate risk

EPA researchers put the chance that a public water system in the Headwaters Hocking River subwatershed exceeds the nitrate limit at 33% if it draws on groundwater and 42% 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 Lancaster Wellfield (Fairfield County), 0.1 mi away: 104 ft deep in sand and gravel (Hocking River aquifer); wells there yield over 500 gallons a minute; not currently sampled. 16 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

Wellhead protection

3% of the ZIP lies inside Ohio EPA source water protection areas for 29 public water systems (Lancaster City PWS, Odrc-Southeastern Correctional Institute, Sugar Grove Village PWS), 1% inside inner management zones, the ground a well draws from within a year; the largest, Lancaster City PWS, is rated high susceptibility in a buried valley setting

Vulnerability index

DRASTIC 178 (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

10 million gallons a day design flow; a major facility; the system has combined sewer overflows

Compliance

12 of the last 12 quarters with a violation; currently in violation (not significant); 32 effluent limit exceedances in 3 years

Combined sewer overflows: 31 outfalls inside this ZIP, 31 within 3 miles, permitted to Lancaster Wpcf. In heavy rain these release untreated sewage mixed with storm water.

Other discharge permits: 18 facilities inside this ZIP other than sewage plants hold a Clean Water Act permit (factories, water plants, quarries, package plants, storm water), 1 of them major; 1 in significant noncompliance; 49 facility-quarters with a violation in the last three years; largest: Upper Hocking Wpcf (4 MGD, major); City Of Lancaster - Stonewall Cemetery Landfill (in significant noncompliance); Geneva Hills (0.007 MGD); Rhonemus Cellars (0.0042 MGD).

Sewage sludge: 217 farm fields covering 5,859 acres inside this ZIP are permitted for spreading treated biosolids, mostly from Lancaster Wpcf (3,526 acres), Central Ohio Bioenergy (1,413 acres), Pickerington Wwtp (430 acres); 2 fields have drawn a complaint; 2 more retired (Ohio EPA). Biosolids carry nutrients and, increasingly under scrutiny, PFAS.

Sludge source: 2 permitted biosolids generators are inside this ZIP; nearest Lancaster WPCF, 1.4 mi away (a major plant); 5 within 10 miles (Ohio EPA).

State water loans: 12 projects inside this ZIP have borrowed $212.0 million from Ohio EPA's revolving loan funds since 2010 (9 sewer, storm water and runoff projects for $108.9 million; 2 drinking water projects for $101.6 million), with $412,077 of principal forgiven. Largest: North Water Treatment Plant Replacement (Lancaster, 2022, $98.2 million); latest: Frederick St Sewer Separation (Lancaster, 2026, $1.6 million). Below-market loans are how most Ohio treatment plants and water mains get rebuilt.

Sewer planning: this ZIP falls in the Lancaster FPA; 53% of it is assigned to Farifeld County as the designated sewage management agency under Ohio's Clean Water Act section 208 plan (generic and specific prescriptions); 9 agencies share the ZIP. The 208 plan decides who may build and extend sewers.

Stormwater: 11% of this ZIP lies inside Ohio EPA's regulated MS4 areas, mostly the City of Lancaster storm sewer system; the towns, townships and counties that own those storm sewers hold a stormwater permit and must control what runs off streets and parking lots (2020 to 2030 designation). 10 sites with an address in this ZIP hold their own industrial stormwater permits (Anchor Hocking Cg Operating Co, Mid West Fabricating Co, Indiana & Ohio Railway and others) (EPA Facility Finder).

Plants inside this ZIP: Lancaster Wpcf (10 MGD, major, CSO).

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 54% of the land, recreation (bacteria) 100%, fish consumption 30%

Causes listed

bacteria (pathogens) (100%), sediment and silt (54%), low oxygen (53%)

Cleanup plans

99% of the land is under a TMDL pollution budget

Watersheds here: Headwaters Hocking River (not supporting); Mouth Clear Creek (not supporting).

Fish advisories (Ohio EPA): Clear Creek (Clearport Road (Clearport) to mouth (Hocking River)): common carp one meal a month (mercury); Hocking River (Rock Mill Road (Rock Mill) to State Route 33 (The Plains)): smallmouth bass one meal a month, black crappie unrestricted (mercury). Statewide, every other fish is one meal a week because of mercury.

Nearest stream assessment (Ohio EPA): Baldwin Run At Lancaster @ Lawrence Rd. on the Baldwin Run, 1.4 mi away, draining 13 square miles: full attainment of its warmwater use; fish IBI 42 of 60 (2016); bugs rated good; habitat QHEI 53 of 100. 5 assessed sites inside the ZIP, 4 within 3 miles, 22 within 10. Scores above about 40 (IBI), 36 (ICI) and 60 (QHEI) mean a healthy warmwater stream.

Stream designations (Ohio EPA water quality standards): 114 miles of designated streams cross this ZIP: 100.5 mi warmwater habitat, 7.4 mi coldwater habitat, 6.1 mi modified warmwater habitat. Nearest specially protected stream: the Arney run (Black run (RM 2.2) to the mouth), 6.4 mi away, a Superior High Quality Water; 7% 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 Hocking River (Clear creek (RM 79.55) to the mouth), 9 mi away, as Outstanding State Water for recreation.

PFAS in the river (Ohio EPA large river survey): at Hocking R. At Logan @ St. Rt. 93, 16.6 mi away, the water carried 78.89 ng/L of total PFAS (PFOA 3.7, PFOS 1.2 ng/L); fish fillets held 29.305 ng/g in bluegill and 17.915 ng/g in catfish (PFOS 10.3 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 Fairfield County used about 189 metric tons of pesticide active ingredient, 371 kg per square mile, 34th of Ohio's 88 counties. Largest: glyphosate 65 t, atrazine 31 t, metolachlor 22 t, acetochlor 12 t, simazine 7 t. Atrazine, the corn herbicide, is the pesticide that most often shows up in Ohio tap water after spring rains; this county used 31 t of it.

Farms (2022 Census of Agriculture): 1,082 farms work 193,611 acres of Fairfield County, with 49.9% of its land in cropland, 179 acres to a farm. 7,524 cattle, 32,269 hogs, 5,527 laying hens, 3,754 broilers, 306 turkeys; 59,643 acres of corn and 76,389 of soybeans. Sales $160 million, 19% 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

• Hocking98% of residentsDrains to the Ohio River

H2Ohio: 3 state water-quality projects inside this ZIP (Elias B. Wagner Preserve; Shelly Lakes Wetland Creation and Retention -- Hocking R. Conservation Corridor; Two Glaciers Wetland Restoration); nearest Shelly Lakes Wetland Creation and Retention -- Hocking R. Conservation Corridor, inland floodplain wetland, funded 2023, in progress, 3.9 mi away: This project consists of floodplain restoration and wetland creation on the former Shelly Lakes property along the Hocking River. Main project benefits will inc...; 1 within 5 miles, 4 within 15. H2Ohio pays for wetlands, farm practices and lead line work to cut the nutrients behind Lake Erie's algae.

Watershed grants: 3 state or federal runoff projects inside this ZIP (2 Section 319, 1 SWIF); nearest "Baldwin Run Stream Restoration Phase II" by City of Lancaster (streambank stabilization or riparian restoration, Section 319), 1.5 mi away; 3 within 10 miles (Ohio EPA project lists: Section 319 and GLRI through fiscal 2023, SWIF through 2017).

Road salt: 1 state chloride-reduction grant inside this ZIP; nearest went to Fairfield County Engineer (equipment, 2024-2025), 3.2 mi away; 2 in Fairfield 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 Headwaters Hocking River subwatershed; its water runs on through Tarhe Run-Hocking River, then Buck Run-Hocking River, then Harper Run-Hocking River.

In 2015 Fairfield County drew about 14 million gallons a day of fresh water (USGS): 9.2 million for public supply (100% from wells, 90,900 people served at 35 gallons a person a day at home), 0.4 million for irrigation; 60,500 residents drew their own well water.

EnviroAtlas, Headwaters Hocking River: 100 to 200 acres in the Conservation Reserve Program; 11,105 acres of grain crops; 80 miles of streams (1.7 per square mile); water use of 1.4 million gallons a day for homes; 38.2 inches of rain and snow a year; 10 kg of nitrogen per hectare falling from the air each year; farm nitrogen of 0.6 kg per hectare a year as manure and 28.8 kg as synthetic fertilizer; 9% of the farmland sits on drained hydric soils; potentially restorable wetlands on farmland cover 18% of the subwatershed; 8.8% of the land is paved or roofed; 31% of the stream banks keep natural cover (EPA EnviroAtlas national metrics, 2010s vintages).

Stream permits: 11% 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; 20% drains toward high-quality waters farther down and might qualify for the Army Corps' blanket nationwide permits after a field screening and 69% 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

$72,153 median

Income spread

14% of households earn under $25,000 a year, 35% $100,000 or more and 7.5% $200,000 or more

Rent

$1,109 a month, median gross

Owner-occupied

68% of 24,772 occupied homes; 64% of owners carry a mortgage

Typical home built

1970

Value spread

11% of owner-occupied homes are worth under $100,000 and 8.2% $500,000 or more; income per person $37,182 a year

Moved in

the typical owner moved in in 2009, the typical renter in 2018

Median age

40.1 years

Commute

29 minutes each way on average, 22% of commuters travel 45 minutes or more, 10% work from home

Housing stock

75% single-family detached, 10% in buildings of 5 or more units, 3.2% mobile homes

Vacancy

7.0% of 26,627 housing units are vacant: 1.8% for rent, 0.6% for sale, 0.5% held for seasonal or occasional use, 4.0% other, such as homes held off the market, in probate or abandoned

Owner costs

23% of owners with a mortgage and 11% of owners without one spend 30% or more of income on housing

Evictions

4.1 eviction filings a year per 100 renter households in 2016 to 2018, 2.44 ending in a judgement (about 263 filings a year; Eviction Lab)

Fair market rent

$1,170 a month for a two-bedroom (one-bedroom $980, three-bedroom $1,400): HUD's fiscal 2026 small-area fair market rent, the benchmark for housing vouchers in the Columbus metro area

Tax returns

28,710 returns for 2022 averaging $65,215 of adjusted gross income; 28% reported under $25,000 and 3% reported $200,000 or more; 14% claimed the earned income credit and 29% were filed by people 60 or older (IRS)

Subsidized housing

17 tax-credit (LIHTC) properties with 860 low-income units, newest placed in service 2020; 9 HUD-assisted multifamily properties with 430 assisted units (Section 8 and similar contracts). Housing vouchers used in private rentals are not counted

Banks

17 full-service bank branches from 12 banks inside this ZIP (FDIC); 3 credit union branches from 3 credit unions (NCUA)

Strain

49% of renters pay 30% or more of income in rent; 5.9% of households have no vehicle; the median renter spends 29.4% of income on rent; the median owner with a mortgage spends 18.7% 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

18,305 one-family houses, 551 two-family houses, 105 three-family houses, 735 condominiums, 124 manufactured homes, 879 farmhouses; also 178 apartment buildings and 428 other residential parcels

Age

32% built before 1950, 68% before 1978 (1978: the year lead paint was banned for housing)

Size

median living area 1,428 sq ft; median lot 0.26 acres (condominiums left out)

Value

median appraised value $233,760 (tax year 2026): the county auditor's market value for property tax, not a sale price

Sales

736 sales in the 12 months to Aug 20, 2026 (median $268,000); 3,376 sales in 5 years (median $245,000, $177 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

75% owner-occupied (homes receiving the owner-occupancy tax credit); 7% company-owned

Neighborhoods

0 neighborhoods and 503 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: Fairfield County Auditor (as of Aug 20, 2026); Hocking County Auditor (as of Sep 12, 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

390 single-family houses, 1,150 units in buildings of five or more, 109 in duplexes and small buildings

Value

$146.2 million of construction at the value declared on the permits

By year

2016: 112, 2017: 117, 2018: 65, 2019: 112, 2020: 143, 2021: 263, 2022: 34, 2023: 16, 2024: 28, 2025: 759, 2026 through July: 7

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

+62% from 2020 to 2025

Last year

+5% in 2025

Since 2000

prices stand at 2.2 times their 2000 level

Series

tracked since 1976

Zillow's typical home value here is $277K (2026-07), up 3% over the year, up 30% over five years and up 100% over ten. Typical asking rent $1,237 a month (2026-07), up 4% over the year.

On the market (Realtor.com, August 2026): median asking price $312,450 (down 5.3% in a year), $197 per square foot for a typical 1,746 sq ft listing; 112 active listings, 68 new this month; listings spend a median 37 days on the market (up 3% from a year earlier); 31% of listings have cut their price.

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

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

Local taxes

Lancaster City 79% of residents

25.1 effective mills (69.9 gross); $1,754 a year on a $200,000 home. Operating 16.0, bonds 4.8, improvements 0.3, inside millage 4.0.

Bloom Carroll Local 6% of residents

26.1 effective mills (49.0 gross); $1,828 a year on a $200,000 home. Operating 14.9, bonds 5.5, improvements 0.6, inside millage 5.1.

Municipal income tax

Lancaster 2.3% (65% 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

Lancaster City 1.5% (79% of residents), Bloom Carroll Local 1.25% (6% of residents), Berne Union Local 2% (6% of residents), Fairfield Union Local 2% (5% of residents), Amanda-Clearcreek Local 2% (4% of residents). Voted by the district and collected with the state income tax.

Sales tax

6.75% combined rate in Fairfield 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-owned66% of residentsAmerican Electric Power (AEP)
• South Central Power Company co-op34% 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).

South Central Power Company outages, 2024: the average customer lost power for 320 minutes (201 minutes leaving out major storm days), about 2.5 interruptions a year.

South Central Power Company residential price, 2024: 14.87 cents per kWh, about $160 a month for the average home across 117,469 residential customers (EIA-861).

South Central Power Company 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 127,851 meters are two-way smart (AMI) meters (EIA-861).

Energy burden: households here spend an average 2.9% of income on electricity, gas and other fuels (about $2,256 a year against $77,695 of income); the 49% of households below 80% of the area median income spend 6.6%, and 28% 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

59% of the 24,772 homes here heat with utility gas.

Utility gas 59%Electricity 32%Propane or LP 6%Oil, wood, other 3%

• Lancaster Municipal Gas municipal65% of residents, main companyMunicipal gas system
• Columbia Gas of Ohio regulated utility35% of residents, main companyNiSource Inc.

Pipes under the street: Lancaster Municipal Gas reported 260 miles of distribution main to PHMSA for 2025, 87% plastic and 0.3% cast iron or bare steel (the leak-prone materials); 41 hazardous leaks repaired in 2025.

PUCO lists 7 companies operating in Fairfield County: Consumers Gas Cooperative, Columbia Gas of Ohio, Knox Energy Cooperative Association, Inc., Lancaster Municipal Gas, Madison Energy Cooperative Association, Inc., National Gas and Oil Cooperative, Northeast Ohio Natural Gas Corporation.

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: Suburban Landfill Gas Recovery, 23.4 mi (biomass, 6 MW).

0 plants within 10 miles totalling 0 MW.

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

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

Gas transmission pipelines

65.5 miles of transmission pipe cross this ZIP: Columbia Gas Trans Co 51.6 mi, Texas Eastern Trans Co 13.9 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

• AT&T Ohio95% of residentsIncumbent local exchange carrier
• Frontier North5% of residentsFrontier

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 96%Underserved, 25/3 to 100/20 1%Unserved, under 25/3 2%

Fiber reaches 38% of locations, cable 92%; a year earlier 96% were served.

Of 24,772 households, 75% subscribe to cable, fiber or DSL, 12% rely on a cellular plan only, and 8% have no internet at home.

Measured by Ookla speed tests, April to June 2025: typical fixed download 363.9 Mbps, upload 72.5 Mbps, 16 ms latency, across 2,847 tests from up to 764 devices in 350 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 93% · 5G 84%
• T-Mobile4G 83% · 5G 75%
• Verizon4G 100% · 5G 59%

Registered towers: 36 antenna structures registered with the FCC inside this ZIP and 13 within 3 miles of its center; the tallest inside is a 500-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 260.7 Mbps, upload 17.8 Mbps, latency 29 ms over 304 tests from up to 171 devices in 105 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

7 public stations inside this ZIP with 15 Level 2 and 11 DC fast ports; the nearest of any kind is LANCASTEROH DC FAST 1, 0.5 mi. 7 stations within 5 miles of the ZIP's population center, 4 with DC fast charging.

Networks here: ChargePoint (3), Blink (1), Francis (1), and 2 stations on other networks.

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

124 stops inside this ZIP: Lancaster-Fairfield Public Transit (124).

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. 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

50 intersections per square mile, a mix of grid and cul-de-sacs

Transit

the EPA's 2020 transit file lacks this area's bus system, so it puts nobody here within three-quarters of a mile of a stop; the Transit card finds 64% of residents within half a mile of one

Mix of uses

employment mix 0.57 and mix of homes and job types 0.51 on the EPA's 0 to 1 scales, where 1 is the most varied

Car-free households

5.9% 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. Here the transit third of the score sits at its minimum because the EPA held no feed for this area's buses; counting them would likely add several points to the score and could move this ZIP up a band.

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

15 with gates; railroads: Indiana & Ohio Railway (18). Busiest crossing: 16 trains a day reported; fastest line 25 mph.

Train accidents: 1 rail equipment accident inside this ZIP since 2010 (1 derailment); $48,500 in damage. Latest: 2012, derailment (Indiana & Ohio Railway); the most common cause here is other train operation/human factors.

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

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

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

Bridges

Age

typical bridge built 1988, 15 built before 1950; oldest 1900, Hoc-10 Christmas over Arney Run(Christmasrockr

Busiest

Hoc-44 CR 33A over Cr90 & Hocking Rive, 21,294 vehicles a day (2015 count)

Owners

county 73, state 38

Rated poor

Gre-22 Camp Ground over T Hocking Rv(Camp Ground (1985, 9,964 a day); E. Sixth Avenue over Fetters Run (1964, 9,364 a day) and 7 more

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

2,219 a day on US 33, 8% of its traffic

Driving

about 1.1M vehicle-miles a day on the 913 counted segments inside the ZIP; the typical segment carries 5,378 vehicles

Busiest local road

county road 33, 25,978 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: 37 people died in 34 crashes inside this ZIP in 2020 to 2024 (3 pedestrians, 13 motorcyclists); 7 involved a drinking driver and 10 happened in the dark. That is 11.9 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

Fairfield County (LHQ), Lancaster, 3.7 mi, public use

Amtrak

South Shore-South Portsmouth station, 71.5 mi (South Shore, KY)

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

56% of tests at or above EPA's 4 pCi/L action level · median 4.7 · highest 414.2

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

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

Flood zones

5.2% of the ZIP's land is in that floodplain, and another 0.4% is in the 0.2% (500-year) zone; 0.8% of residents live in the 0.2% zone. Zones mapped here: AE, X (0.2%).

Design storms (NOAA Atlas 14): a 100-year storm here drops 5.5 inches in 24 hours (2.8 in a single hour, 4.3 in six); a 2-year storm 2.6, 10-year 3.7, 25-year 4.4, 500-year 7.0 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: Hocking River at Lancaster OH, 0.9 mi away, draining 48 square miles. Record flow 3,520 cubic feet a second at a stage of 15.75 ft on 1968-05-27; the highest since 2016 was 1,990 on 2022-02-17 (USGS, 23 annual peaks, 1956 to 2025).

280 federal flood insurance policies are in force in this ZIP, covering $43 million of buildings; 91% of them are in a mapped high-risk zone; the typical policy costs $830 a year (about 1% of households).

158 federal flood insurance claims from this ZIP since 1978, 56 since 2010, paying about $806,151 in all; the worst year was 2018 with 20 claims; 6% of claims came from outside the mapped high-risk zone.

Levees: nearest is the Raccoon Run Part 5, 9 mi away (de-accredited).

Community status: Lancaster takes part in the National Flood Insurance Program; flood map effective 07/19/18. Fairfield County's unincorporated areas take part in the National Flood Insurance Program; flood map effective 04/25/24.

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

• Ice storm86
• Drought80

FEMA's expected annual loss here from all hazards: $15 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 55, tornado 54, winter weather 74.

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

Climate

Temperature

53.2°F average; typical January low 22°, July high 85°

Hot and cold days

22 days a year reach 90°F; 114 nights fall below freezing, 3 below 0°F; 26 days never climb above freezing

Rain and snow

40.2 inches of precipitation on 77 days with a tenth of an inch or more; 17 inches of snow on 6 days with an inch or more

Degree days

5,274 heating, 1,003 cooling (base 65°F): the higher the heating number, the bigger the winter gas bill

Drought (U.S. Drought Monitor): since 2020 Fairfield County has spent 28 weeks in moderate drought or worse, 13 of them severe or worse (most recently 13 weeks in 2024), and 60 weeks at least abnormally dry. The worst since 2000 was exceptional drought in 2024/09; 5% of all weeks since 2000 were in drought. As of 2026-09-01: no drought.

Long run (NOAA, Fairfield County): the average year ran 52.7 °F over 1996 to 2025 against 51.1 °F over 1901 to 1930, 1.5 °F warmer (1.7 °F warmer than 1951 to 1980); the warmest year on record was 2024 at 55.1 °F, and 2025 came in at 52.5 °F. Precipitation averaged 42.2 inches a year lately against 41.3 a century ago, 2% more; the wettest year was 2011 with 55.9 inches, and 2025 brought 43.6. More rain in bigger bursts is what strains storm sewers and septic fields.

Stations: Lancaster (0.2 mi, temperature and precipitation); Buckeye Lake 1 N (17.4 mi, 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 20.5 µg/m³ (24-hour standard 35)

Ozone

64 ppb, 4th-highest daily 8-hour reading at Reynoldsburg, 18.2 mi away (standard 70)

County AQI

Fairfield County has no monitor of its own, so EPA publishes no daily index for it

Air toxics

30 in a million lifetime cancer risk from outdoor air toxics across Fairfield County (EPA AirToxScreen 2020), mostly formaldehyde (18) and carbon tetrachloride (3)

Permitted sources

15 permitted air sources inside this ZIP under the Clean Air Act (3 major, Title V), 8 synthetic minor; 6 had a violation in the last 3 years, 1 in high-priority violation now. Notable: 3 Sigma LLC Plant 3 (major, 2 violation quarters); Drew Foam Holdings, LLC (major, 2 violation quarters); Anchor Hocking, LLC (major); Shelly Materials Plant No 62 (high-priority violation, 12 violation quarters) (9 permanently closed sources also on file) (EPA ECHO)

Air standards

Fairfield 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

21 facilities have reported toxic chemical releases or transfers to EPA's inventory from inside this ZIP, and 2 sites appear in the Superfund program's list (most assessed and never listed).

389 EPA-registered facilities of all kinds in this ZIP: 4 brownfield sites in the cleanup program (Anchor Hocking Plant # 2, Former Frick-Gallagher, Frick Gallagher Manufacturing Facility), 161 hazardous-waste handlers, 26 with air permits, 71 with water discharge permits.

Nearest landfill: Fairfield County Public Safety and Jail Facility, 0.3 mi from the center, municipal solid waste landfill; 3 landfill sites within 3 miles of the population center, 4 inside this ZIP. Ohio EPA's list includes closed and historic dumps.

State cleanup program: 11 sites inside this ZIP (Anchor Hocking Plt No 2 Former; Arcair Co; Bill Taylor Landfill and more), 8 within 3 miles of the population center; the nearest is Essex Group Inc, 0.3 mi from the center, site assessment.

Voluntary cleanups: 4 properties inside this ZIP hold an Ohio EPA covenant not to sue after a Voluntary Action Program cleanup, 3 carry an environmental covenant restricting future use, 3 are under institutional controls; 4 such properties within 3 miles of the population center, nearest Lancaster Glass, 0.4 mi. These are former industrial and commercial sites certified clean enough to reuse.

Solid waste: 6 licensed waste facilities inside this ZIP (2 transfer stations, 2 compost sites, 1 construction debris landfill, 1 scrap tire site); nearest M & B Demolition Disposal Inc (construction debris landfill), 1.5 mi from the center; 5 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): 98 active RCRA handlers inside this ZIP, 1 of them licensed to treat, store or dispose of hazardous waste; 3 had a violation in the last 3 years; $26,720 in penalties in the last 5 years. Notable: Cirba Solutions US Inc (treatment, storage or disposal, 5 violation quarters); Crown Cork and Seal (4 violation quarters); 3 Sigma LLC (2 violation quarters). Handlers include every business that generates hazardous waste, from body shops to chemical plants.

Underground tanks: 28 sites with 88 registered underground storage tanks in use (221 more tanks closed over the years); 140 leaking-tank releases on record, 7 open at the time, 75 inside a drinking-water source protection area; 6 reported since 2015, the latest in 2018 (EPA UST Finder, Ohio records as of 2018-2019).

Drop-off sites: the nearest scrap tire drop-off is Smetzer Tire, Lancaster OH, 1.2 mi away (2 inside this ZIP); the nearest household battery drop-off is Lowe's, Lancaster, 1.7 mi away (2 inside this ZIP) (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

Where it went

1,257 lb to the air, 0 lb to surface water, 0 lb to land or underground injection; another 43,836 lb was shipped off site for disposal or release

Chemicals

Xylene (mixed isomers) 1,133 lb, Certain glycol ethers 121 lb, Cadmium And Cadmium Compounds 1 lb (carcinogen)

Carcinogens

2 lb of the on-site releases were chemicals EPA lists as carcinogens

Facilities

Crown Cork & Seal Co (Usa) Inc Crown Closures Div (Fabricated Metals): 1,254 lb, mostly Xylene (mixed isomers); Cirba Solutions Us Inc (Hazardous Waste): 3 lb, mostly Cadmium And Cadmium Compounds

Trend

6,505 lb on site in 2020, so down 81% over four years

Pounds are what facilities report, not what reaches anyone: a ton of ammonia to the air and an ounce of mercury to a river are not the same risk. Off-site transfers go mostly to landfills and treatment plants elsewhere.

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: Tarhe Dry Dam, 2.3 mi, condition fair (flood risk reduction, 30 ft high, 93 acre-feet, built 1995, on Tarhe Run, local government owned).

Inside this ZIP: 32 dams, 10 high-hazard, 7 rated poor: Hunters Run Structure No. 1 (high hazard, condition fair); Hunters Run Structure No. 3 (high hazard, condition poor) and 30 more.

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

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

Disasters on record

Strongest nearby: F1 on 1982-03-13, 2 mi track.

16 federal declarations for Fairfield County since Ohio's first in 1956 (11 major disasters): severe storm 7, flood 3, biological 2. Latest: Covid-19 Pandemic (2020).

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

Warnings since 2015 (National Weather Service, Fairfield County): 19 tornado warnings (2017: 1, 2018: 4, 2019: 5, 2021: 2, 2024: 2, 2025: 1, 2026: 4), 198 severe thunderstorm warnings, 31 flash flood warnings, 33 flood warnings and 144 flood advisories, 18 winter storm or blizzard warnings, 29 heat warnings or advisories, 6 extreme cold or wind chill warnings, 3 snow squall warnings; 1,036 products in all.

Mitigation grants (FEMA): 4 hazard mitigation projects in Fairfield County since 2009, worth $5.5 million ($2.7 million federal), covering 3 properties; mostly advance assistance (fma and pdmc), drainage works, safe rooms. Largest: drainage works for Lancaster, $3.7 million (fiscal 2012).

Mitigated properties: FEMA money has treated 3 properties in this ZIP between 2011 and 2012: 2 safe rooms built, 1 other measure. Buyouts turn repeatedly flooded lots into permanent open space.

Disaster aid to households: 275 households in this ZIP registered with FEMA after 3 declared disasters; 220 were approved for $1.4 million of housing and other-needs help. Registrations by event: COVID-19 pandemic (2020): 226; severe winter storms, flooding and mudslides (2005): 48; severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes, flooding, landslides and mudslide (2019): 1.

181 severe weather reports for Fairfield County since 2016 in NOAA's Storm Events log: 91 damaging thunderstorm wind, 33 hail, 30 river and street flooding, 22 flash floods. Largest hail 2.5 in (May 3, 2022); strongest measured gust 62 mph (Mar 7, 2026); 1 injury; about $1.7 million in reported damage, the costliest being tornadoes on Apr 5, 2023 ($250K). Zone-wide advisories add 43 winter weather, 15 winter storms, 5 high wind.

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

unidentified material or sheen (8), oils and hydraulic fluid (6), diesel and fuel oil (5)

Largest

about 150 gallons of fuel diesel / diesel fuel (vehicle on or off road) in 2025, Greenfield Twp

Reached water

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

By year

2021: 4, 2022: 4, 2023: 3, 2024: 10, 2025: 4, 2026: 6

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

26 producing, 293 plugged or abandoned, the rest drilled but idle, gas storage, orphan, expired permits or unknown

Orphans

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

Operators

Northwood Energy Corp (7 producing), Thompson Floyd Oil Co Inc (4 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: 1 working operation inside this ZIP in 2015 (Paul D. Beery Trucking Co., sand & gravel); nearest Paul D. Beery Trucking Co. (sand & gravel, Paul D. Beery Trucking Co., 2,648 tons sold), 5 mi away in Fairfield County; 0 within 3 miles, 1 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

Aetna silt loam, occasionally flooded; Aetna makes up 80% of the unit, 0.5% slope

Water

somewhat poorly drained; flooding occasional, ponding none

Septic

Very limited for a leach field under Ohio's rule

Basements

Very limited for dwellings with basements

Farmland

Prime farmland if drained

Elevation

810 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

Alley Park

local park, 298 acres inside the ZIP

Christmas Rocks Dedicated Nature Preserve

state conservation area, 191 acres inside the ZIP

Nearest state park: Hocking Hills State Park, 11.8 mi.

Protected land: 3.2% of this ZIP (3,398 acres) is in the USGS Protected Areas Database inventory of fee-owned parks, preserves and recreation land (public agencies, land trusts, and private clubs, camps and utility land, as their owners report it): 2,482 acres local, 461 acres private, 455 acres state. Largest: Clear Creek Nature Preserve (city), 1,659 acres; Alley Park (city), 329 acres; Christmas Rocks Dedicated Nature Preserve (ODNR), 191 acres. 1% of the ZIP is protected land open to the public.

Trails: no built named trail crosses this ZIP; 14.8 miles more are proposed or planned; nearest is the SR 256 Bike Lanes, 9.2 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 - Brooks Park at Buckeye Lake State Park, 13.5 mi (0 within 5 miles); fishing access: Fishing Access at Buckeye Lake State Park, 14.4 mi (0 within 5 miles); swim area: Boat Swim Area at Buckeye Lake State Park, 14 mi (0 within 5 miles); campground: Campground/Campsite at A.W. Marion State Park, 15.4 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

605 acres pond, 177 acres emergent wetland, 50 acres forested/shrub wetland. Largest single wetland: 18 acres of freshwater pond.

Vernal pools: 1 potential high-quality vernal pool covering 1.9 acres lies 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 Slate Run Metropark (Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks), 24 acres, 14.3 mi away; 0 within 10 miles.

Mitigation sites: nearest ODOT Coonpath Road (South), 5.6 mi away (a pooled mitigation site); 2 within 10 miles. These are wetlands and streams built or restored to replace ones filled under Clean Water Act permits.

Assessed wetland: nearest Keller Low, a cattail marsh of 7.8 acres, 10 mi away: ORAM 34 of 100 (category 2), plant community index 18 of 100 (surveyed 1997); 0 within 10 miles. Category 3 wetlands are the state's best and hardest to fill; category 1 are degraded.

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

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

Land cover

Developed

16%: 1% high intensity (downtown blocks, big-box lots), 3% medium (apartments, small-lot houses), 5% low (houses on larger lots), 7.8% open space (lawns, parks, golf courses, road verges)

Farmland

45%: 27% row crops, 19% pasture and hay

Crops 2025

of 31,275 cropped acres, 45% soybeans, 41% corn, 4% wheat and small grains (plus 3% wheat followed by soybeans, counted under soybeans), 6% hay and alfalfa, 3% vegetables, orchards, fallow and other crops; 18,063 acres of pasture and grass (USDA Cropland Data Layer)

Forest

37%, plus 0.5% grass and shrub

Water and wetland

0.5% open water, 0.1% wetland

Paved and roofed

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

Tree canopy

32% of the ZIP sits under tree canopy

Area

164.5 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

23.2% of adults 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 8.2% a graduate degree; 46.8% stopped at high school or earlier

Ages

20.8% under 18, 19.1% 65 or older

Race and origin

91.7% white, 2.4% Black, 2.5% Hispanic or Latino, 0.4% Asian, 3% other or two or more races

Born abroad

1.5% of residents (970 people); largest countries of birth: Mexico (206), India (99), Cuba (89)

Veterans

8.3% of adults

Households

2.4 people per household on average; 27% of households are one person living alone, 49% married couples

Who lives here

30% of households include children, 34% someone 65 or over and 12.8% are a senior living alone; of people 15 and over, 51% are married, 30% never married, 13% divorced and 6% widowed

Poverty

10.8% of residents live below the poverty line, 12.8% of children and 10.4% of people 65 and over; the Gini index of income inequality is 0.42 (0 would mean every household earns the same, 1 that one household earns everything). County-wide, the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate is 8.1% (9.3% of children) with a median household income of $90,728 (SAIPE)

Ancestry

most often reported: German 25%, English 15%, Irish 13%

Movers

12.5% of residents lived somewhere else a year earlier, 0.7% in another state and 0.3% abroad

Language

0.4% of households speak limited English; 1.8% speak Spanish at home

Group quarters

2,543 of the 62,010 people counted here in 2020 (4.1%) lived in group quarters: 1,833 in prisons and jails, 502 in nursing facilities, 160 in other group housing such as shelters, group homes and worker dormitories, 44 in juvenile facilities, 4 in other institutions (2020 Census)

Moving

10,105 people moved into Fairfield County between the returns they filed in 2022 and 2023 and 8,311 moved out (net +1,794, 131,433 stayed put); most arrivals came from Franklin, OH (5,116), Licking, OH (801), Pickaway, OH (352); most leavers went to Franklin, OH (3,219), Licking, OH (798), Perry, OH (388) (IRS)

Metro or rural

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

Nonprofits

358 tax-exempt organizations registered to addresses in this ZIP, 32 of them reporting $1 million or more in income; 81% are 501(c)(3) charities and 16% churches or religious groups; largest: South Central Power Company ($392 million), Fairfield Medical Center ($373 million), Fairfield Healthcare Professionals Inc ($37 million) (IRS)

County growth

Fairfield County went from 158,917 people in April 2020 to 169,752 in July 2025 (+6.8%): 8,347 births, 8,342 deaths and a net +10,339 from migration since 2020; in 2025 alone a net 1,767 moved in from elsewhere in the U.S. and 197 arrived from abroad (Census estimates)

Since 1900

First counted in 1810 with 11,361 people and 30,264 by 1850, Fairfield County counted 34,259 people in 1900, 52,130 in 1950, 73,301 in 1970, 122,943 in 2000 and 158,917 in 2020; it has never been larger than today (5.0 times its 1900 size, decennial censuses)

Commuting area: USDA classes this ZIP as the core of a micropolitan area (a town of 10,000 to 50,000) (rural-urban commuting area code 4 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: Health care and social assistance 5,234, Retail 3,128, Hotels and restaurants 2,825. 48% of local jobs pay over $3,333 a month, and 57% of residents' jobs do.

Businesses: 1,245 establishments with 22,258 employees and $1.1 billion a year in payroll in 2023, at least 34 of them with 100 or more workers; most common: health care and social assistance (212), retail (179), other services (147), construction (129) (ZIP Business Patterns).

Workplace safety (OSHA): 51 inspections of workplaces in this ZIP since 2020 (7 after deaths or injury reports, 21 after complaints, 10 planned, 11 on referrals); most inspected: Alleguard, Llc. (3), Anchor Hocking Company (3), Fairfield Medical Center, Fairfield Hospital, Fairfield Medical Ctr Pr (2). 5 worker deaths investigated since 2015 and 3 hospitalisations: 2023, employee is killed when crushed by falling car; 2022, employee is killed when mower rolls-over.

County labor market: Fairfield County's unemployment rate was 3.2% in July 2026 (4.5% a year earlier), with 84,339 people in the labor force and 2,682 looking for work. Employers in the county paid an average of $1,059 a week in the first quarter of 2026 (up 3.6% on the year) to 48,060 workers at 3,526 establishments, employment up 1.9%; the largest private sectors are health care and social assistance (8,855 jobs, $1,211 a week), retail (6,626 jobs, $682 a week), restaurants and hotels (6,496 jobs, $413 a week). (BLS)

Working-age residents: 60.1% of people 16 and over here are in the labor force, and 4.5% of the civilian labor force was unemployed, averaged over 2020 to 2024 (Census ACS). Residents' most common occupations: management and business 17%, office and administrative support 12%, education, legal, community service and arts 9%; 8% are self-employed and 13% work for a government.

Federal money: in fiscal 2025 the federal government obligated $11 million in contracts performed in Fairfield County ($66 a resident) and $689 million in grants ($4,333 a resident), plus $2 million in loan guarantees and loans and $856 million in direct payments to people and organizations (USAspending; Social Security, Medicare and most benefits are not counted).

County economy: Fairfield County produced $5.2 billion of real GDP in 2024 (2017 dollars, up 12.5% since 2019); personal income came to $61,185 a person in 2024, 26th of Ohio's 88 counties and up 28% since 2019 before inflation (BEA).

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

Opportunity zone: 12% of residents live in a census tract designated a federal Qualified Opportunity Zone in 2018, where investors who put capital gains into local projects get tax breaks (CDFI Fund list, 2010 tracts carried to 2020 boundaries).

How they get there: 79.6% drive alone, 6.9% carpool, 0.2% transit, 2.1% walk, 0.4% bike, 9.7% work from home (ACS).

Where residents work: 27% inside this ZIP; 4% in Columbus (43215), 2% in Columbus (43207), 2% in Canal Winchester (43110) (shares of the 28,154 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

below the Ohio median: low-income children here mostly stayed in the lower half

Incarceration

2.4% of those children were in jail or prison on census day 2010

Coverage

68% 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

51st percentile: poverty, unemployment, housing cost burden, no high school diploma, no health insurance

Household characteristics

50th: people 65 and over or 17 and under, disability, single-parent households, limited English

Racial and ethnic minority status

25th

Housing and transportation

57th: 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 36.7%, no leisure-time physical activity 27.3%

Chronic conditions

diabetes 13.3%, high blood pressure 38.3%, COPD 9.1%, cancer (any but non-melanoma skin cancer) 9.5%

Habits

current smoking 17.1%, binge drinking 15.9%, short sleep 39.8%

Mind

depression 27.0%, frequent mental distress 17.9%, feeling lonely 33.1%

Access

uninsured under 65 8.2%, yearly checkup 79.4%, dental visit 61.5%

Hardship

any disability 31.2%, food insecurity 13.5%

Heart and lungs

current asthma 11.2%, coronary heart disease 7.8%, stroke 3.8%, arthritis 32.7%

Keeping up

78.4% of adults with high blood pressure take medicine for it, 85.4% had a cholesterol check in 5 years

Social needs

housing insecurity 10.6%, no reliable transportation 7.6%, utility shut-off threat 7.9%, lacking emotional support 20.9%

Provider shortage

57% live in an area HRSA designates a primary care shortage area for its low-income residents (score 17 of 25); none for dental; 100% live in a designated mental health shortage area (score 19 of 25) (HRSA; higher scores mean greater need)

Coverage (Census)

6.9% of residents have no health insurance (4.6% of children); 18% are on Medicaid and 50% have coverage through an employer

Disability (Census)

16.9% of residents report a disability, 36% of those 65 and over

County (County Health Rankings 2025): Fairfield County sits in health group 3 of 10 among U.S. counties for population health (1 is healthiest) and group 3 for community conditions. Premature death 8,090 (Ohio 9,740) years of life lost before 75 per 100,000; one primary care doctor for every 1,790 people (Ohio 1,328), one mental health provider for every 494 people (Ohio 286), one dentist for every 2,011 people (Ohio 1,535); preventable hospital stays 2,484 (Ohio 3,033) per 100,000 Medicare enrollees; injury deaths 88.6 (Ohio 100.7) and suicides 13.8 (Ohio 14.7) per 100,000; infant deaths 6.3 (Ohio 7.0) per 1,000 births; teen births 12.6 (Ohio 17.4) per 1,000 girls 15 to 19; children in poverty 11.1 (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: 29 deaths in the 12 months ending December 2025 (40 a year earlier, 71 at the highest since 2020, in the 12 months ending June 2022), about 17.5 per 100,000 residents against 20.8 statewide (CDC provisional counts).

Cancer (NCI State Cancer Profiles): Fairfield County records 473.7 new cancers a year per 100,000 people, age-adjusted, for 2018 to 2022 (Ohio 472.9, U.S. 448.6), about 930 cases a year, with the rate stable; cancer deaths 158.2 per 100,000 (Ohio 160.3, U.S. 145.4), falling. By site, per 100,000 (Ohio in parentheses): lung 60 (63.6), colorectal 38.2 (38.4), female breast 131.1 (133), prostate 140.1 (120.8), bladder 22.1 (21.8), leukemia 11.5 (13).

Medicare: 32,365 people in Fairfield County were on Medicare in 2025 (19% of residents): 28,946 aged 65 or over and 3,419 younger people with disabilities. 59% chose a Medicare Advantage plan, 13% also had Medicaid and 84% 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

245 beds · no trauma designation listed · 1 general or critical-access hospital within 10 miles, 6 within 25.

Medicare rating: ★★☆☆☆ · emergency room: yes · typical ER visit 145 minutes door to discharge (Ohio median 155)

Patients' verdict: 70% would definitely recommend it, 71% rated their stay 9 or 10 out of 10 (★★★☆☆ patient-experience rating, 593 surveys).

Outcomes: 30-day death rates after heart failure 12.6% (about the national rate), heart attack 12.7% (about the national rate), pneumonia 16.1% (about the national rate), July 2022 to June 2025; the patient-safety composite for serious complications (July 2022 to June 2024) is worse than the national value (Medicare).

Community health center: 2 inside this ZIP, nearest FCHC Medical Mobile Clinic, Lancaster, 0.7 mi away; 2 within 3 miles, 3 within 10. These federally funded clinics see anyone and charge on a sliding scale.

Veterans: nearest VA site is Lancaster VA Clinic, Lancaster (primary care outpatient clinic), 1 mi away; 1 VA site within 10 miles, 4 within 25; 1 inside this ZIP.

Providers: 1,981 active health care providers list a practice address in this ZIP: 305 physicians, 127 nurse practitioners and physician assistants, 69 dentists, 438 mental health professionals, 18 pharmacies, 3 urgent care centers, 2 hospitals, 17 nursing or assisted-living facilities, 38 home health or hospice agencies; most common physician specialties: Family Medicine (64), Internal Medicine (43), Obstetrics & Gynecology (16) (NPPES registry, August 2026).

Dialysis: 2 centers inside this ZIP, nearest Fairfield Kidney Center, Lancaster, 1.5 mi away, 15 stations, Medicare ★★☆☆☆ (American Renal Associates); 2 within 5 miles, 3 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

6 certified homes within 5 miles, 12 within 15; 5 inside this ZIP.

Medicare rating

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

Beds

52 certified

Ownership

For profit, corporation

Penalties

no federal fines or payment denials since 2023 (CMS)

In this ZIP: BUCKEYE CARE AND REHABILITATION (1★, 99 beds); LANFAIR CENTER FOR REHAB & NSG CARE INC (4★, 84 beds); LUXE REHABILITATION AND CARE CENTER (2★, 172 beds) and 2 more.

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

170 offenses: 5 murders, 36 rapes, 7 robberies, 122 aggravated assaults (4.1 per 1,000 residents; Ohio 3.2)

Property

937 offenses: 82 burglaries, 791 thefts, 55 vehicle thefts (22.5 per 1,000; Ohio 16.9)

Other

360 simple assaults, 281 vandalism reports, 272 drug offenses, 23 weapons violations

Reporting

12 months of 2024 on file; 41,687 residents served; this department covers the 65% of the ZIP's residents in its territory, the rest fall under others

Trend

violent offenses down 6% from 181 in 2023; property up 5% from 892

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

2 stations within 3 miles, 3 within 8. Inside this ZIP: Fairfield County Sheriff's Office; Lancaster Police Department.

Nearest post office: Lancaster Post Office, 0.5 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

3 stations within 3 miles, 6 within 8.

Inside this ZIP: Lancaster Fire Department Station 2; Lancaster Fire Department Station 1; Lancaster Fire Department Station 3 and Headquarters and 1 more.

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 55 hours a week

Building

41,328 square feet

Fairfield County District Library

5 buildings, serves 103K people, 1.8 visits per resident a year, 940K items lent, 1,058 programs, $4.6M annual income

Inside this ZIP: Fairfield County District Library.

Museums: 8 inside this ZIP (Aha! A Hand's On Adventure: A Children's Museum, Decorative Arts Center of Ohio, Fairfield Heritage Association and 5 more); nearest Ohio Glass Museum, history museum, Lancaster, 0.4 mi away; 9 within 5 miles, 21 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

77% of residents live more than half a mile from a supermarket, 52% more than 1 mile

Without a car

40% live in a tract flagged for low income and low vehicle access; 5.9% of households have no vehicle (Census ACS 2020 to 2024)

Poverty

15.5% of residents below the poverty line

SNAP stores

8 supermarkets or superstores and 3 grocery stores inside this ZIP take SNAP, alongside 21 convenience stores, 2 farmers markets, 11 other outlets (dollar, drug and discount stores); nearest supermarket or grocery store Save A Lot (supermarket), 0.2 mi from the ZIP's center; 10 supermarkets and grocery stores within 3 miles (USDA, 2026)

SNAP households

11% of households received SNAP benefits in the past year (Census ACS 2020 to 2024)

Setting

69% of residents in urban tracts, across 17 tracts, 4 flagged

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

Before the settlers

General George Sanderson's recollections, recorded in Hervey Scott's 1877 county history, describe a Wyandot town of about 500 people and 100 wigwams standing on the prairie along the Hocking River about where Lancaster's Broad Street and the later canal basin lay, extending back to the hill south of the site of the Methodist church. It was called Tarhe, or in English Cranetown, for its principal chief, Tarhe (the Crane), whose own wigwam stood near a spring that still fed the Hocking Canal's fourth lock. The bluff a mile north of the town site, later called Mount Pleasant, was known to the Wyandot as the Standing Stone, a landmark visible for miles up and down the valley; the 1912 county history records that the mountain went by 'the Indian name, Standing Stone' before it became Rising Park. A second Wyandot town, called Toby Town after its chief, stood about nine miles west near present Royalton and was inhabited by Wyandot and Lenape (Delaware) people together. The Wyandot ceded their claim to the Hocking valley at the Treaty of Greenville, signed August 3, 1795, and most withdrew toward the Sandusky River soon after, though Scott's history says a few lingered near their old hunting grounds and burial places for several years before finally leaving. Fairfield County's 1883 history separately describes about twenty Adena- or Hopewell-era mounds, circles and squares scattered through the county's townships (none within Lancaster itself), and records that Dr. M. Z. Kreider of Lancaster opened a mound about a mile southwest of the city, on the former Creed farm, finding a few bones and trinkets the historian guessed belonged to 'some Wyandot warrior' rather than the older mound-building culture.

Peoples named in the record: Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware).

• Tarhe Town (Cranetown) village · north bank of the Hocking River, at the site of Lancaster, near the later canal basin and fourth lock · occupied at least by 1790; ceded and largely abandoned after the 1795 Treaty of Greenville source
• Standing Stone (Mount Pleasant) other · a 250-foot sandstone bluff about one mile north of Main and Broad streets, Lancaster · used and named by the Wyandot before white settlement; became the city park Rising Park in the 19th century source
• Toby Town village · about nine miles west of Tarhe Town, near present Royalton, within Fairfield County · before 1798, when the first white settlers reached the area source
• Mound on the Creed farm mound · about one mile southwest of the city of Lancaster · prehistoric mound, opened in the 19th century by Dr. M. Z. Kreider of Lancaster; finds attributed by the historian to a Wyandot burial source

Fairfield County

Fairfield County's own 1883 history counts about twenty ancient works ascribed to the Mound Builders within its borders -- mounds, circles and squares, none of imposing size, found in nearly every township but concentrated in Greenfield, Bloom, Clear Creek, Hocking, Berne, Walnut, Rush Creek and Richland. No flint occurs naturally in the county, so the arrow points and stone axes settlers turned up everywhere had been carried in from the quarries of Licking and Perry counties. The largest works, by that history's own judgment, stood at Rock Mill in Greenfield Township, on the hill above the… 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 Lancaster began

Lancaster, the Fairfield County seat and now the county's largest city at about 40,000 people, grew up where Zane's Trace crossed the Hocking River on ground the Wyandot called the Standing Stone, after their village of Tarhe Town (Cranetown) on the river's north bank. Captain Joseph Hunter built the first cabin near the crossing in 1798; Ebenezer Zane, granted the section of land there for blazing the Trace, platted the town in 1800 and it was named New Lancaster for the Pennsylvania hometown of many of its first settlers, shortened to Lancaster in 1805. It became the seat of Fairfield County at the county's creation on December 9, 1800, grew on canal trade in the 1830s, and gave the country the Sherman brothers -- General William Tecumseh Sherman and Senator John Sherman -- both born in the same house on East Main Street. The Hocking Glass Company, founded in 1905 and merged into Anchor Hocking in 1937, made Lancaster a company town for glassware through the twentieth century.

Settled 1798 (Captain Joseph Hunter builds a cabin at 'Hunter's Settlement' on Zane's Trace, on the prairie just west of the Hocking River crossing, in April 1798), platted 1800 (Ebenezer Zane lays out and sells the first lots that fall; the plat was substantially complete by spring 1801), incorporated 1831 as an incorporated village; became a city of the third class in 1851; by Ebenezer Zane, proprietor of the section of land at the Hocking crossing. source

The name. The town was first called New Lancaster, in compliment to the many early settlers, including the influential Emanuel Carpenter family, who had emigrated from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Ohio legislature dropped the 'New' in 1805 to avoid confusion with the Pennsylvania town in the postal service, though the older name kept informal use for another twenty years. source

Timeline32

• c. 1790The Wyandot town of Tarhe (Cranetown), governed by Chief Tarhe and numbering about 500 people, stands on the north bank of the Hocking River at the site of the future Lancaster. source
• 1795The Treaty of Greenville, signed August 3 between the United States and a coalition including the Wyandot, cedes most of the Hocking valley; the Wyandot soon withdraw toward the Sandusky River. source
• 1796-1797Ebenezer Zane's road, Zane's Trace, is cut from Wheeling to Limestone, Kentucky, crossing the Hocking River at the future site of Lancaster; Congress grants Zane the right to purchase land at the crossing. source
• 1798Captain Joseph Hunter emigrates from Kentucky and builds a cabin on Zane's Trace just west of the Hocking crossing in April, the first white settlement in the upper Hocking Valley. source
• 1799Samuel Coates Sr. and Jr. build a cabin at 'the Crossing of Hocking' in April; when a weekly mail route opens along Zane's Trace later that year, Coates becomes the first postmaster at the new settlement. source
• 1800In the fall, Ebenezer Zane lays out and sells the first town lots, giving some free to mechanics who would build cabins and set up shop; the settlement is named New Lancaster for the many settlers from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. source
• 1800On December 9, the governor and council of the Northwest Territory organize Fairfield County and name New Lancaster its seat of justice. source
• 1805The Ohio legislature shortens the town's name from New Lancaster to Lancaster to avoid confusion with Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the postal service. source
• 1811The frame house at what is now 137 East Main Street is built; it will become the birthplace of both Sherman brothers. source
• 1816Thomas Ewing, later a U.S. Senator and the first Secretary of the Interior, establishes his law practice in Lancaster, where he will live the rest of his life; the Sherman house is enlarged the same year. source
• 1820William Tecumseh Sherman is born in the family house on East Main Street on February 8. source
• 1823John Sherman, the future U.S. Senator and Treasury Secretary, is born in the same house on May 10, the eighth of Charles and Mary Sherman's eleven children. source
• 1829Charles Sherman, a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, dies suddenly of typhoid fever, leaving his widow with eleven children; nine-year-old William Tecumseh Sherman is taken in by neighbor Thomas Ewing. source
• 1831Lancaster is incorporated as a village by act of the state legislature. source
• 1832The Lancaster Lateral Canal Company is organized and its 'Side Cut' to the Ohio Canal at Carroll is put under contract. source
• 1835 or 1836The first canal boats are towed into Lancaster on the Side Cut on the Fourth of July -- the source itself is unsure which year -- celebrated by an estimated 10,000 people with a roasted ox at Cold Spring Hill. source
• 1837-1841The state Board of Public Works builds the Hocking Canal south from Lancaster in stages, reaching Nelsonville by 1840 and Athens by 1841, with 31 locks and 8 dams in all. source
• 1850The Fairfield County Agricultural Society organizes, with John Reber as president; it holds the first Fairfield County Fair in Lancaster in October 1851. source
• 1851Lancaster becomes a city of the third class. source
• 1857-1858The Ohio legislature funds a reform farm for boys near Lancaster; ten boys are brought from the Cincinnati House of Refuge and placed there on January 30, 1858. source
• 1871Thomas Ewing dies in Lancaster on October 26 at age 81; his son-in-law's fame as General Sherman is by then secure. source
• 1878The city erects its first waterworks, a pumping station on West Chestnut Street near the Hocking Canal with a standpipe for fire protection, drawing water from the canal. source
• 1882The canal-fed fire system is abandoned for a new pump house on West Wheeling Street, drawing on an enlarged spring and infiltration gallery that begins supplying domestic as well as fire service. source
• 1898A 2.5-million-gallon masonry reservoir is built on Walter's Hill northeast of the pump house to serve the growing water system. source
• 1903-1907The city drills municipal wells for sanitary reasons and, after several years of test drilling, opens a new well supply near the Wheeling Street station by 1907. source
• 1905-1906Isaac J. Collins founds the Hocking Glass Company in the former 'Black Cat' carbon plant, melting its first glass in February 1906. source
• 1906The Fairfield County Fair's Round Cattle Barn, 95 feet across, is built by J. E. Hedges. source
• 1924Fire destroys the Hocking Glass Company's 'Black Cat' plant on March 6, killing foreman Merrill Deavers and idling 650 workers; the company rebuilds and buys a controlling interest in the Lancaster Glass Company to keep production going. source
• 1937Hocking Glass merges with the Anchor Cap and Closure Corporation to form Anchor Hocking, which becomes Lancaster's largest employer. source
• 1951The Sherman brothers' birthplace opens to the public as a museum, operated by the Fairfield County Heritage Association. source
• 1966The Sherman House, at 137 East Main Street, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, two years after its 1964 National Historic Landmark designation. source
• 1983The Lancaster Historic District, combining the earlier Square 13 and West Main Street local districts and including the Sherman House, the Georgian Museum and the Ewing and Stanbery houses, is listed on the National Register on August 11. source

Stories

Tarhe's Town on the Hocking

Before Lancaster existed, a Wyandot town of about 500 people stood on the north bank of the Hocking River along the same prairie later platted into city streets. General George Sanderson, a Fairfield County pioneer who lived to see the town grow from its founding, recalled the place decades later as 'Tarhe, or in English, Cranetown,' named for its ruling chief. The chief's own wigwam stood near a spring on the riverbank -- a spring that, by Sanderson's telling, still flowed into the Hocking near the fourth lock of the canal built through the same ground a generation later. Tarhe himself was remembered as an unusually able leader; other sources describe him fighting the United States until the 1794 defeat at Fallen Timbers, after which he signed the Treaty of Greenville and worked afterward for peace between his people and the settlers pouring down Zane's Trace. source

A Cabin at the Crossing

Two years before Ebenezer Zane's sons began selling town lots, Fairfield County's first white settler had already built his home a few hundred yards from where Lancaster would rise. In April 1798, Captain Joseph Hunter brought his family from Kentucky up the newly cut Zane's Trace and stopped on the prairie just west of the Hocking River crossing, with no neighbor nearer than the Muskingum or the Scioto. He and his wife -- the first white woman in the valley -- cleared brush and raised a cabin at what came to be called Hunter's Settlement. Within months other families followed: the Wilsons, the Greens, the McMullens. Hunter lived to see the wilderness he had entered become 'the flourishing and populous county of Fairfield,' dying around 1829, the same year Charles Sherman's death would orphan his young sons a few miles away in the town Hunter's arrival had made possible. source

New Lancaster, Twice Named

The town Ebenezer Zane platted in the fall of 1800 was not called Lancaster at first. Many of the earliest settlers, including the influential Carpenter family, had come from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the new settlement on the Hocking was named New Lancaster in their honor. The name stuck informally for a generation, but it caused enough confusion with the Pennsylvania town's mail that the Ohio legislature officially shortened it to plain Lancaster in 1805. Locals kept calling it New Lancaster for another twenty years anyway. By then the town Zane had laid out for $5 to $50 a lot, with free parcels thrown in for mechanics willing to set up shop, had already become the seat of a county organized before Ohio itself was a state. source

The Side Cut's Fourth of July

Lancaster's link to the outside world for a generation was a narrow ribbon of water. In 1832 a group of local investors organized the Lancaster Lateral Canal Company to dig a 'Side Cut' connecting the town to the Ohio Canal at Carroll. The project took the better part of three years, and when the first boats finally arrived, the town treated it as a holiday to rival any other: an estimated ten thousand people -- more than the town's own population many times over -- gathered at Cold Spring Hill for a roasted ox and a free dinner, with cannons booming and bands playing, though the old county history admits it cannot say for certain whether the great day fell in 1835 or 1836. Wheat that had fetched 25 to 40 cents before the canal opened found buyers at far better prices afterward, and Lancaster's nine dry goods stores did a booming trade shipping the county's grain east. source

One House, Two Statesmen

The plain frame house built on Lancaster's East Main Street in 1811 would produce two of Ohio's most consequential nineteenth-century figures. Charles and Mary Sherman raised their large family there, and two of their sons -- William Tecumseh, born February 8, 1820, and John, born May 10, 1823 -- would go on to command Union armies and steer the U.S. Senate and Treasury, respectively. Their father's sudden death from typhoid fever in 1829 scattered the eleven Sherman children among relatives and friends; nine-year-old William was taken in by a neighbor, attorney Thomas Ewing, who had built his own law practice in Lancaster since 1816. Sherman later married Ewing's daughter Ellen, tying the two families together permanently. Ewing died in Lancaster in 1871, and the Sherman house itself opened to the public as a museum eighty years after the brothers' births, in 1951. source

The Standing Stone Becomes a Park

The 250-foot sandstone bluff a mile north of downtown Lancaster carried three names across three eras, by the 1912 county history's own count. The Wyandot called it Standing Stone, a landmark visible for miles along the valley they had lived in before 1795. White settlers renamed it Mount Pleasant and made it a favorite spot for visitors, including a Duke of Saxony who reportedly climbed to the summit in 1828 and carved his name into the soft sandstone, still legible generations later. The mountain's final transformation came when Philip Rising bought it and gave it outright to the city as a public park, and it has been known as Rising Park ever since -- Lancaster's Indian-named, duke-signed, privately-donated mountain in the middle of a small Ohio city. source

Ten Boys From the House of Refuge

Ohio's first reform school for boys began, awkwardly, with a failed bill. In 1857 a state legislator from Oberlin proposed a commission to study reform schools elsewhere, but the measure died. It took a Cincinnati reformer's report on European institutions to push the legislature into action the following year: money was appropriated, a site purchased six miles southwest of Lancaster, and cheap log buildings hastily raised. On January 30, 1858, ten boys arrived from the House of Refuge in Cincinnati to become the reform farm's first residents, under the day-to-day charge of commissioner George Howe and his wife, who served as matron. The institution grew into the Boys' Industrial School, its buildings visible from the top of Mount Pleasant six miles away, and it remained a fixture of the county for generations after those first ten boys stepped off the wagon. source

Fire at the Black Cat

Isaac Collins had named his new glassworks for the old carbon plant he bought to house it in 1905 -- workers called the blackened building 'the Black Cat' -- and by 1911 the Hocking Glass Company was already one of Lancaster's biggest employers. On March 6, 1924, fire tore through the plant, killing foreman Merrill Deavers and throwing 650 people out of work overnight. Insurance covered only part of the loss, and for a time it was not clear the company would rebuild at all. Lancaster's own residents helped answer that question, raising money and support for reconstruction, while the company bought a controlling interest in the nearby Lancaster Glass Company to keep shipping product during the rebuild. Hocking Glass came back stronger, and in 1937 it merged with the Anchor Cap and Closure Corporation to become Anchor Hocking -- the company whose name would be inseparable from Lancaster's for the rest of the century. source

A Fair Since Before the Civil War

The Fairfield County Agricultural Society organized in 1850, and the following October it held the first Fairfield County Fair in a field owned by its president, John Reber. The fair proved popular enough that Reber was authorized to buy permanent grounds, and in 1852 he purchased fourteen acres at the foot of Mount Pleasant for the purpose -- ground the fair still occupies, much expanded, today. By 1906 the fairgrounds had grown enough to support a 95-foot Round Cattle Barn built by J. E. Hedges, though fires in 1908 and 1909 destroyed the horse barns, Art Hall and grandstands and forced a rebuild. Lancaster's own Wikipedia entry describes the fair today as the 'last' one held in Ohio's county-fair calendar each year, always in October -- a wry nod to the state's 88 counties and Fairfield's traditionally late slot on the circuit, and one of the state's longest continuously running county fairs by any measure. source

Not found: The batch fact sheet's dates for the modern municipal water system (a 1925 Miller Park plant, a 1932 North wellfield, a 1939 Lawrence Street Water Pollution Control Facility, and Ohio EPA's 2014 approval of a Phase II Long Term Control Plan) match figures found on the city of Lancaster's own website, but every attempt to open lancasterohio.gov directly -- via WebFetch, curl, and the Wayback Machine -- failed with a TLS handshake error, so these specific facts are omitted here rather than repeated on the fact sheet's word alone; the detailed 1878-1909 water-system history that is included instead comes from the 1912 county history, which was read directly. The 'Standing Stone' name for Mount Pleasant is well attested in the 1877 and 1912 county histories, but no source opened in this pass gives a specific date for when Tarhe Town was abandoned beyond the general 1795 Greenville cession, or names a Shawnee or other non-Wyandot village directly on the Lancaster town site (Toby Town, the other historic-era village recorded in the county, was Wyandot and Lenape, not Shawnee). The exact founding date of the Ohio Glass Museum and precise dimensions of the 1913 Ohio flood's effect on Lancaster specifically could not be confirmed in this pass -- the Great Flood of 1913 Wikipedia article, the most likely source, does not mention Lancaster or the Hocking River at all -- so no 1913 flood entry is included. The NRHP-listed Chestnut Ridge Farm, Concord Hall, Crawfis Institute and Joseph Ijams House named in the batch's ZIP-code hints were checked and found to stand in Hocking Township, Berne Township and West Rushville, not within Lancaster, and are excluded accordingly. (confidence high)

Fairfield County

Fairfield County was organized by proclamation of Governor Arthur St. Clair on December 9, 1800, out of Ross and Washington counties, and named, an 1877 county history explains, for "the many beautiful champaign fields of land lying within its original boundaries." Its seat, Lancaster, was platted that same year by Ebenezer Zane where his new road, Zane's Trace, crossed the Hocking River, on ground the Wyandot called the Standing Stone and where the town of their principal chief, Tarhe, stood until the 1795 Treaty of Greenville forced his people toward the Sandusky. The county gave the country the Sherman brothers, grew on the Ohio Canal's Lancaster Lateral and Hocking feeder lines and then on the railroads that replaced them, built one of Ohio's longest-running county fairs, and struck oil at Bremen in 1907. Buckeye Lake's canal-era reservoir laps the county's northern edge, the Wagnalls Memorial has anchored Lithopolis since 1925, and since 1990 Columbus's growth has turned Violet Township's farmland into the city of Pickerington, whose population has more than quadrupled.

Settled 1798 (Capt. Joseph Hunter builds the first cabin in the upper Hocking Valley, at Hunter's Settlement on Zane's Trace west of the river crossing), platted 1800 (Ebenezer Zane lays out and sells the first lots of New Lancaster, the future county seat, that fall), incorporated 1800-12-09 (Fairfield County organized by proclamation of Governor Arthur St. Clair, out of Ross and Washington counties); 1831 (Lancaster incorporated as a village); 1851 (Lancaster becomes a city of the third class); by Gov. Arthur St. Clair, proclaiming for the government of the Northwest Territory. source

The name. An 1877 county history states plainly that Fairfield County "was so named from the circumstance of so many beautiful champaign fields of land lying within its original boundaries" -- a description independently matched by an 1905 U.S. government study of American place names, which likewise derives Fairfield, Ohio "from the beauty of their fields." Wikipedia's infobox for the county offers a second, uncited claim, that the name instead references the Fairfield district of Lancaster, Lancashire, England, echoing the seat's own name; no contemporary source for that claim turned up, and it sits awkwardly next to the well-documented fact that Lancaster, Ohio was named for Lancaster, Pennsylvania, not for any English town. Both claims are reported here.

The county seat. Lancaster was platted in the fall of 1800 by Ebenezer Zane, on the section of land Congress had granted him for cutting Zane's Trace, at the point where the Trace crossed the Hocking River; the Northwest Territory's governor and council named the new town, then called New Lancaster, the county's seat of justice the same December day the county itself was organized. No rival town seriously contested the choice, and Lancaster has been the seat continuously since.

Timeline27

• c. 1790A Wyandot town of about 500 people and 100 wigwams, called Tarhetown or Cranetown for its chief Tarhe, stands on the Hocking River's north bank at the future site of Lancaster. source
• 1795-08-03The Treaty of Greenville cedes the Hocking Valley to the United States; the Wyandot begin withdrawing toward the Sandusky River soon after. source
• 1796-1797Ebenezer Zane cuts Zane's Trace from Wheeling to Limestone, Kentucky, crossing the Hocking River at the future Lancaster and earning Zane the section of land there. source
• 1798Capt. Joseph Hunter builds the first cabin in the upper Hocking Valley, at Hunter's Settlement on Zane's Trace west of the river crossing. source
• 1799Joseph Loveland and Hezekiah Smith build the first mill on the Hockhocking, a log gristmill at the upper falls that becomes known as Rock Mill. source
• 1800Ebenezer Zane lays out and sells the first lots of New Lancaster that fall, naming it for the Pennsylvania hometown of many of its settlers. source
• 1800-12-09Governor Arthur St. Clair organizes Fairfield County by proclamation, out of Ross and Washington counties, and names New Lancaster its seat. source
• 1805The legislature shortens the town's name from New Lancaster to Lancaster to avoid postal confusion with Lancaster, Pennsylvania. source
• 1812Organized Wyandot and Lenape hunting visits to the Hocking Valley end as settlement fills the county and game grows scarce. source
• 1820/1824A flood destroys the original 1799 Rock Mill in 1820; a new six-story gristmill is built on higher ground in 1824 and still stands today. source
• 1824/1825Henry Hildebrand plats Baltimore (first called New Market) in Liberty Township; Jacob Goss plats Basil nearby the next year, its name chosen by a one-vote margin over 'Geneva.' source
• 1831Lancaster is incorporated as a village by act of the state legislature. source
• 1832-1836The Lancaster Lateral Canal Company builds the 'Side Cut' to join the Ohio Canal at Carroll; the first boats reach Lancaster on the Fourth of July, 1835 or 1836. source
• 1834Bremen is platted in the county's eastern end and named for the German port city. source
• 1837-1841The state Board of Public Works extends the Hocking Canal south from Lancaster, reaching Nelsonville by 1840 and Monday Creek, 44 miles out, by 1841. source
• 1850-1851The Fairfield County Agricultural Society organizes under president John Reber; the first Fairfield County Fair is held in Lancaster the following October. source
• 1853/1856The Cincinnati, Wilmington and Zanesville Railroad reaches Lancaster in August 1853 and is completed on to Zanesville in July 1856. source
• 1858-01-30Ten boys arrive from the Cincinnati House of Refuge to become the first residents of the new Ohio Reform Farm, six miles southwest of Lancaster. source
• 1868The Columbus and Hocking Valley Railroad is completed from Columbus through Lancaster to Athens, 74 miles in all. source
• 1880A railroad reaches Basil and Baltimore, ending their decades of dependence on the declining Ohio Canal for shipping grain. source
• 1905-1937Isaac J. Collins founds the Hocking Glass Company in Lancaster in 1905; it merges into Anchor Hocking in 1937, the city's largest employer for the rest of the century. source
• 1906-1909J. E. Hedges builds the fairgrounds' 95-foot Round Cattle Barn in 1906; fires in 1908-09 destroy the horse barns, Art Hall and grandstands, rebuilt by 1909. source
• 1907The Bremen Oil Field is discovered, setting off an oil boom in the county's eastern townships that lasts into the early 1920s. source
• 1913-03Serious flooding strikes the Rush Creek watershed around Bremen and Sugar Grove, one of a documented run of early-20th-century floods across the county. source
• 1925Mabel Wagnalls Jones dedicates the Wagnalls Memorial in Lithopolis in memory of her parents, Adam and Anna Wagnalls. source
• 1990-06-01The rebuilt 1824 Rock Mill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. source
• 1990-2020Pickerington's population more than quadruples, from 5,668 to 23,094, as Columbus's growth reaches Violet Township's farmland. source

County stories

Zane Cuts His Trace

In early 1796 Ebenezer Zane, a Revolutionary War veteran and the founder of Wheeling, petitioned Congress for the right to cut a road from Wheeling to Limestone, Kentucky, through country still largely Indian land. Congress paid him in land: three square-mile tracts, wherever his road crossed a major river. Zane, his brother Jonathan, his son-in-law John McIntire and a Native guide named Tomepomehala blazed the route through 1796 and 1797, reusing older trails where they could -- the Mingo Trail east of Zanesville, the Moxahala Trail toward Chillicothe -- though no specific Native trail is recorded at the Hocking crossing itself, only that the ford there was already known. Zane never lived on any of his three tracts: he handed the Muskingum crossing to his brother and son-in-law, who founded Zanesville there; he put his sons Noah and John in charge of selling lots on the Hocking tract that became Lancaster; and the already-settled Scioto tract he simply sold off in 1804. A road built for faster mail to Kentucky ended up drawing the county's first white settlers and its courthouse town behind it. source

Tarhe's Letter to the Quakers of Baltimore

On September 8, 1798, three years after the Treaty of Greenville forced his people from the Hocking Valley, Chief Tarhe sent a letter of friendship from his new home at Sandusky to the Quakers of Baltimore, Maryland, who had been sending missionaries to the Wyandot for years. Tarhe spoke for "the whole" of the Wyandotte nation and its "nephews," the Delaware, recalling an old council where the Quakers had promised "a chain of friendship... a chain of silver that would never get rusty." He apologized that a visit that summer was impossible, "as the season is now far advanced... we will all be scattered abroad for the purposes of hunting," but invited the Friends for the next June, promising to guide them himself "to the grand council fire," and closed praying that "our roads and paths may never be stained with the blood of our young warriors." The letter survives because a Fairfield County historian, compiling his book more than a century later, thought it worth reprinting whole -- one of the only documents in Tarhe's own words from a man whose town had stood on ground that historian's own county now occupied. source

Rock Mill and the Vanishing Lead

Long before Joseph Loveland and Hezekiah Smith built the county's first mill at the Hocking's upper falls in 1799, those same falls had given the river its Native name: the channel narrows above the drop and swells out below it into the shape of a bottle, which is what "Hockhocking" means in both Delaware and Shawnee. The mill Loveland and Smith built lasted two decades before an 1820 flood swept it away; its 1824 replacement, a six-story timber-framed structure on higher ground, still stands. Rock Mill's whiskey trade made it a favorite gathering place for Wyandot who still hunted the valley after 1795, and settlers noticed something odd: parties would vanish into the hills for two or three days and return with fresh lead, which they sold or gave away but never explained. No one ever found the source, though speculation about a hidden lead mine near the mill, or in the hills south of Lancaster, persisted for years after the last Wyandot stopped coming. The National Register listed the 1824 mill in 1990, and the Fairfield County Parks Commission has since raised money toward its restoration. source

The Side Cut and the Hocking Canal

Lancaster sat eight miles from the Ohio Canal's main line, close enough to smell the prosperity passing it by, until local investors organized the Lancaster Lateral Canal Company in 1832 to dig a connecting "Side Cut" to Carroll. Farmers who had gotten 25 to 40 cents a bushel for wheat before the canal reached them commanded far better prices afterward, and the state's Board of Public Works followed the Lateral's success by extending a canal south from Lancaster starting in 1836, reaching Nelsonville by 1840 and Monday Creek, 44 miles out, by 1841 -- the first boatload of coal out of the valley was, to farmers who had never seen "stone-coal," a curiosity in itself. The state bought out the private Lateral for $61,241.04 in 1838. Canal traffic reshaped villages across the county: Baltimore and Basil, both platted in the 1820s near the canal's main line, shipped grain by water for half a century until railroads reached them in 1880, and Millersport, at the tip of the reservoir that became Buckeye Lake, built its economy on the canal's boats and fisheries. source

The Round Barn That Outlasted Two Fires

Fairfield County's fair is old enough that no living memory reaches its beginning: the Agricultural Society organized in 1850, and the first Fairfield County Fair opened in a field belonging to its president, John Reber, the following October. The society bought fourteen permanent acres at the foot of Mount Pleasant in 1852 -- ground the fair still occupies, much enlarged -- and by 1880 had grown the grounds to 36 acres with its own half-mile racetrack. In 1906 builder J. E. Hedges raised a 95-foot Round Cattle Barn, an unusual design that outlived the disaster that followed it: fires in 1908 and 1909 destroyed the horse barns, Art Hall and both grandstands, rebuilt with a new wooden grandstand and a 22,000-square-foot Art Hall by 1909. The Round Barn survived both fires and still stands today, a curiosity from an era when the complex covered a fraction of its current 68 acres and 49 buildings. The fair calls itself, with a wry nod to Ohio's 88 counties, the last one held each year on the state's October calendar. source

Two Villages, Won by One Vote

Henry Hildebrand platted the first of two villages in Liberty Township in 1824, naming it New Market for his home town in Virginia; it became Baltimore instead, incorporated in February 1833, and for years after the Ohio Canal reached it in 1832 was one of the county's busiest grain markets, its warehouses built by Wing and Atwood and, soon after, Amos Sweazy. Three-quarters of a mile west, Jacob Goss platted a second village in 1825, and its name came down to a vote: with "Geneva" and "Basil" both proposed, the deciding ballot was cast by Sebastian Leonard, whose son Henry ran the town's oldest store for decades, and "Basil" won by exactly one vote. The two villages stayed rivals and neighbors -- sharing a single Methodist circuit, "two appointments, Baltimore and Basil," but incorporating separately, Basil not until 1905 -- until gas wells on the Bibler farm between them supplied both, and a railroad reached them together in 1880, ending their shared dependence on a fading canal. source

Bremen's Oil Boom

Bremen was platted in 1834 in the county's eastern reach and named, as many small Ohio towns founded by German-descended settlers were, for the port city of Bremen in the old country -- a modest farm village with no particular reason to expect excitement for the next seventy-plus years. That changed in 1907, when drillers struck the Bremen Oil Field, and the quiet village found itself at the center of an oil boom that lasted into the early 1920s, its population nearly doubling between 1900 and 1910 as derricks went up across the surrounding farmland. The boom left the village its own local heritage rather than lasting wealth: Bremen still holds Oil Derrick Days every September, a festival built entirely around remembering the years when the fields around a small Fairfield County crossroads briefly mattered to the oil business. source

Sources: archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · firekinggrill.com · shermanhouse.org · sites.google.com · commons.wikimedia.org · publications.newberry.org · touring-ohio.com · co.fairfield.oh.us. 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

• Sherman, John, Birthplace (building) · National Historic Landmark
• Bush, Samuel, House (building)
• Chestnut Ridge Farm (building)
• and 13 more

Place names (USGS): 21 named communities (Blue Valley Acres, Colfax, Lancaster, Pleasant Hill, Wacker Heights and more); 14 named streams end here (Black Run, Fetters Run, Hunters Run, Muddy Prairie Run and more); 20 named lakes or reservoirs (Triangle Lake, Benua Lake, Hunters Run Conservation District Structure Reservoir and more); 11 named summits (Christmas Rocks, Allen Knob and more); 3 valleys. 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

• Lancaster City79% of residentsCity school district
• Bloom Carroll Local6% of residentsLocal school district
• Berne Union Local6% of residentsLocal school district
• Fairfield Union Local5% of residentsLocal school district
• Amanda-Clearcreek Local4% of residentsLocal school district

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

12 public schools inside this ZIP: Bridges (1 star); Early Childhood Center 1; Fairfield Union High School (4.5 stars); Fairfield Union Rushville Middle School (4 stars) and 8 more. Nearest to the population center: Mt. Pleasant Elementary School (2.5 stars), 0.4 mi; 2 within a mile, 10 within 3.

5 private schools inside this ZIP with 297 students in kindergarten through 12th grade (3 religious): William V. Fisher Catholic High School (139 students, Catholic); St. Bernadette School (112 students, Catholic); New Story Schools (36 students, special education) and 2 more (NCES Private School Survey 2023-24; the survey's student counts, here and per school, exclude prekindergarten).

Enrolled here: 7,415 students attend the 12 public schools inside this ZIP with 2023-24 enrollment on file; 20.2 students per teacher. 60% of the 7,220 students at the 10 schools reporting it qualify for free or reduced-price meals (2 did not report). (NCES)

Enrollment: 9,757 residents attend kindergarten through 12th grade, 11% of them at private schools; 2,403 are in college or graduate school (Census ACS 2020 to 2024).

Money, fiscal 2023: Lancaster City took in $114 million, 37% from the state, 51% local and 12% federal, and spent $14,319 per pupil on day-to-day operations for 6,263 students, 61% of it on instruction; capital outlay $21.0 million (Census school finance survey via NCES).

Child poverty: the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate puts 13% of Lancaster City's school-age children below the poverty line (996 of 7,543 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 3 stars, gap closing 3 stars, early literacy 2 stars, graduation 3 stars, college and career readiness 4 stars

Achievement

performance index 73% of ODE's maximum score for the year (the average of the top 2% of district scores, not the highest score possible) (score 80.2, 78.7 the year before)

Graduation

90.9% of the class of 2024 graduated in four years; 77.8% of that class (graduates or not) showed college, career, workforce or military readiness

Spending

$11,244 per pupil in 2023-24 against $12,759 statewide

Teachers

average salary $75,147, 13 years of experience, 54.1% with a master's degree, 9.6% in their first years of teaching

Enrollment

6,075 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

Ohio University-Lancaster Campus is a regional campus of a public university with 3,676 students over the 2023-24 year; published tuition and fees $6,178 a year in state, $9,170 out of state; 14% of a 286-student entering class graduated (six-year bachelor).

1 institution within 10 miles, 10 within 25. Inside this ZIP: Ohio University-Lancaster Campus.

Next nearest: Ohio State School of Cosmetology-Canal Winchester (15.3 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

• Lancaster (city)65% of residentsCity
• Pleasant Township, Fairfield County8% of residentsTownship
• Hocking Township, Fairfield County8% of residentsTownship
• Berne Township, Fairfield County6% of residentsTownship
• Greenfield Township, Fairfield County5% of residentsTownship
• Bloom Township, Fairfield County3% of residentsTownship
• Madison Township, Fairfield County2% of residentsTownship

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

Ohio EPA grants 2025: 2 grants worth $62,200 went to Lancaster-Fairfield Community Action Agency, Fairfield County Health Department in this ZIP (1 litter cleanup, 1 mosquito control).

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 20Lancaster · since 2019 · site
• Jeff LaRe ROhio House 73 · 79%Violet Township · since 2019 · site
• Kevin D. Miller R 69 · 21%Newark · since 2021 · 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