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Ohio Counties

There is eighty-eight counties in the state of Ohio. The Ohio Constitution allows counties to set up a charter government as many cities and villages do, but only Summit County has done so.

Jefferson County, Ohio

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

County Seat: Steubenville
Year Organized: 1797
Square Miles: 410

Court House:

301 Market Street
County Courthouse
Steubenville, OH 43952-2187

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Residents named the county in honor of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the first United States Secretary of State.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History

The Northwest Territory government authorized the creation of Jefferson County on July 29, 1797. Residents named the county in honor of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the first United States Secretary of State. Fort Steuben, now the site of Steubenville, contained the first federal land office in Ohio, which sold federal land to settlers as they migrated westward, spurring Ohio’s development.

Jefferson County is located in the eastern portion of Ohio, and it is in the heart of Appalachia. Its eastern border touches the Ohio River and helps form Ohio’s boundary with West Virginia. With only 1.5 percent of the county’s 410 square miles deemed to be urban, most residents live in rural areas. The county averages just over 180 people per square mile. The county’s largest community and county seat is Steubenville, which had just over nineteen thousand residents in 2000. Like many of Ohio’s predominantly rural counties, Jefferson County experienced a loss in population between 1990 and 2000. In 2000, 73,894 people resided in the county, a decrease of eight percent since 1990.

Service industries, such as health care, communications, and tourism, and retail positions are the two largest employers in Jefferson County. Farming is a distant fifth behind manufacturing and government positions. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coal mining, especially strip mining, were major employers in the county. Now, much of the strip-mined land has been reforested. In 1999, the per capita income for Jefferson County residents was approximately twenty-one thousand dollars. More than fifteen percent of the county’s residents lived in poverty.

Most voters in Jefferson County claim to be independents, yet in recent years, they have supported Democratic Party candidates by a small margin at the national level.

Sources

Jefferson County, Ohio History Central, July 24, 2008,

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1951&nm=Jefferson-County

Neighboring Counties:

Columbiana County (north)
Hancock County, West Virginia (northeast)
Brooke County, West Virginia (east)
Ohio County, West Virginia (southeast)
Belmont County (south)
Harrison County (southwest)
Carroll County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Adena	village	Incorporated Area
- Amsterdam	village	Incorporated Area
- Bergholz	village	Incorporated Area
- Bloomingdale	village	Incorporated Area
- Brush Creek	township
- Cross Creek	township
- Dillonvale	village	Incorporated Area
- Empire	village	Incorporated Area
- Irondale	village	Incorporated Area
- Island Creek	township
- Knox	township
- Mingo Junction	village	Incorporated Area
- Mount Pleasant	village	Incorporated Area
- New Alexandria	village	Incorporated Area
- Newtown	village	Incorporated Area
- Rayland	village	Incorporated Area
- Richmond	village	Incorporated Area
- Saline	township
- Smithfield	village	Incorporated Area
- Steubenville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Stratton	village	Incorporated Area
- Tiltonsville	village	Incorporated Area
- Toronto	city	Incorporated Area
- Wells	township
- Wintersville	village	Incorporated Area
- Yorkville	village	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

Online High Schools

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."

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