Champaign County, Ohio

Champaign County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Urbana
Year Organized: 1805
Square Miles: 429

Court House:

1512 S. US 68 Suite A100
County Courthouse
Urbana, OH 43078-1677

Etymology - Origin of County Name

The county’s name came from the French word for “level land.”

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History

On February 20, 1805, the Ohio government authorized the creation of Champaign County. The county’s name came from the French word for “level land.” The county was originally parts of Greene and Franklin Counties. Among the county’s earlier residents were the Swedenborgians, a religious group that established Urbana University.

Champaign County is located in west central Ohio. It is predominantly rural, with less than one percent of the county’s 429 square miles consisting of urban areas. The county seat is Urbana. With a population of 11,613 people, Urbana was the county’s largest community in 2000. Unlike most of Ohio’s predominantly rural counties, Champaign County experienced an eight percent population growth rate between 1990 and 2000, bring the total number of residents up to 38,890. The county averages ninety people per square mile.

The largest employers in Champaign County are manufacturing businesses, followed closely by farming. Service industries, sales positions, and government are close behind the primary two employers. In 1999, the per capita income in the county was almost twenty-four thousand dollars, with 7.5 percent of the people living in poverty.

Most voters in Champaign County claim to be independents, yet in recent years, they have supported Republican Party candidates at the national level.

Among Champaign County’s more prominent residents was backwoodsmen Simon Kenton, who is buried in Urbana’s Oakdale Cemetery. John Quincy Adams Ward, a famous sculptor, was born in Urbana, as was Brand Whitlock, a novelist, Progressive, and eventual mayor of Toledo, Ohio.

Sources

Champaign County, Ohio History Central, July 23, 2008,

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1910&nm=Champaign-County

Neighboring Counties:

Logan County (north)
Union County (northeast)
Madison County (southeast)
Clark County (south)
Miami County (southwest)
Shelby County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Adams	township
- Christiansburg	village	Incorporated Area
- Johnson	township
- Mad River	township
- Mechanicsburg	village	Incorporated Area
- Mutual	village	Incorporated Area
- North Lewisburg	village	Incorporated Area
- St. Paris	village	Incorporated Area
- Urbana (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Woodstock	village	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resource Guide

Counties: US Map

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."

Penn Foster High School

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