Ridgeville, Indiana

12 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1953 and the latest in 1986. It stands in Franklin Township. It lies in ZIP code area 47380. It stands on Fetid Creek. The Survey maps it on the Ridgeville quadrangle. 688 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 997 feet above sea level.

Ridgeville within Randolph County

Population over time

3 figures

Ridgeville fell from 716 to 688 between 1870 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

Year	People	Change
1870	716
2010	803
2020	688	-115 (-14%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

4 surveys from 12 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

1953 USGS Muncie quadrangle1:250000, 5 printings
1956 USGS Muncie quadrangle1:250000
1960 USGS Ridgeville quadrangle1:24000, 3 printings
1986 USGS Muncie quadrangle1:100000, 3 printings

In the county-history sources

39,141 words on this township

History of Randolph County, Indiana with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers : to Which Are Appended Maps of Its Several Townships, published 1882 names this settlement in its chapter on Franklin Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The mineriil advantages are found in its beds of liino rock, which between Doerlicld and Eidgevillo have beon utilized for borning lime, and its banks of gravel which have, however, been saflfared sti'angely enough to be useless till within a yeiir or two past. The people are now waking up to the mine of value that lies in their gravel banks, and are rapidly constructing pikes in various directions; and in a few more j'ears the citizens will wonder how they could have beon content to drag through the impassable seas and oceans of mud in which for forty years ]iast they had beon helplessly floundering and hopelessly engulfed. Franklin is so small, and Ridgeville is so central, that there Seems til have been no call for any other town to grow ui) within its limits. At any rate, no other has ever found place in that -neighborhood.

Passage source: History of Randolph County, Indiana with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers : to Which Are Appended Maps of Its Several Townships, published 1882.

The roads through E'ranklin are chiefly the route from Wincheter to Ridgeville and northward, and the route from Greenville via Deerfield and Ridgeville into Delaware County. The rail roads are the Richmond & Grand Rapids Road and the Union City & Logansport Road, crossing at Ridgeville, thus making that towu an important center of trade, and furnishing to the township a good market and abundant commercial facilities.

Some twelve or fourteen years ago, the Free- Will Baptists, in connection with leading citizens oE the place and region, established Ridgeville College, which has over since been maintaining a heroic, and moreover a successful struggle for existence. Arthur McKew, Esq., of Ridgeville, not to mention others, is understood to have given at various times $11,001) to its funds. Ezekiel Clough, of Jackson Township, has contributed many thousand dollars to the same excellent purpose.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Franklin Township - it names this place 40 more 40 times.

Mines and quarries near this place

2 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 2 workings within 5 miles of Ridgeville: 1 past producer, 1 producer. 1 still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	H&R Stone Corp Limestone Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
	Ridgeville, Meshberger Bros. S	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer

Every working recorded in Randolph County

Storms near this place

7 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Ridgeville in 7 storm reports between 2001 and 2025: 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail, 1 tornado, 1 flood. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
March 2006	Flood	Ridgeville	$20,000	Two separate water rescues were required when vehicles drove into high water near the Mississinewa River.
September 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Ridgeville	$10,000	no account filed
May 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Ridgeville	$5,000	Numerous trees were downed at a homestead east of Ridgeville due to damaging thunderstorm wind gusts.
August 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Ridgeville	$5,000	Part of an enclosed porch was blown off of a house due to a damaging thunderstorm wind gust.
April 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Ridgeville	$4,000	Multiple trees downed by thunderstorm wind gusts.
August 2003	Tornado (F0)	Ridgeville	-	Second tornado was formed from parent supercell. This one was again an F0 and touched down 9 miles west of Ridgeville in northwest Randolph county. The tornado traveled 1 mile and damaged only trees and power lines.
April 2001	Hail	Ridgeville	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Randolph County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Place	Distance	Sheets
Deerfield	2.9 miles	14
Randolph	3.2 miles	14
Stone	3.8 miles	13
Shedville	5.5 miles	11
Mull	6.1 miles	13
Saratoga	6.9 miles	18
New Pittsburg	7.0 miles	14
Winchester	8.5 miles	18

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on Ridgeville	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2805012	The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 442000. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.