Decorative drawing: a small American settlement seen from a low hill. Not a photograph of this place.

Blue Creek, Ohio

12 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1916 and the latest in 1991. It stands in Jefferson Township. It lies in ZIP code area 45616. It stands on Churn Creek. The Survey maps it on the Blue Creek quadrangle. It stands 682 feet above sea level.

Blue Creek within Adams County

Then and now

1916 to 1991

The same ground, surveyed 75 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Blue Creek, surveyed 1991

Topographic sheet of Blue Creek, surveyed 1916

Topographic sheets covering this place

12 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.

In the county-history sources

4,596 words on this township

A History of Adams County, Ohio, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Including Character Sketches of the Prominent Persons Identified with the First Century of the Country's Growth .., published 1900 names this settlement in its chapter on Jefferson Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The soil in the valleys is very fertile, producing bountiful crops of corn, wheat, oats, clover, timothy and tobacco. This latter has become a staple crop in Jefferson Township, many of the hillsides on which the accumulation of decaying vegetation has gathered for centuries, where sheltered from winds, producing a fine quality of white hurley leaf. Upon the discovery of this fact, a great influx of population to this region, from the hurley tobacco districts of Brown and Clermont Counties took place in the period from 1875 ^o 1885. The "coon-hunter, the ginseng digger, and the bark peeler,'* have given place to intelligent and industrious husbandmen, whose neat farms and comfortable homes, rank with those in the more fertile regions of the county. There is not a more picturesque region nor a happier, more comfortable class of people, in what constitutes real happiness and comfort, than Blue Creek Valley and its denizens.

Passage source: A History of Adams County, Ohio, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Including Character Sketches of the Prominent Persons Identified with the First Century of the Country's Growth .., published 1900.

Then Jonathan Waite settled on the Peter Wycoff farm, and Philip Lewis built a cabin near the mouth of Blue Creek. Among the early settlers may be mentioned Jesse Edwards, John Newman, Lazalel Swim, David Newman, John Prather, John Beckman, George Sample, at the mouth of Soldier's Run and Thomas Lewis.

William Lewis, a son of Philip Lewis, in writing of the early settlers in Jefferson Township in 1879, said: "My father, Philip Lewis, came to Jefferson Township in 1797 [the land records show that he was here in 1796], and settled on Blue Creek near where it empties into Scioto Brush Creek. He built a saw and grist mill the same year. James and Joseph Williams were here when father came. They had come the year before. They were squatters, followed hunting and lived in shanties without floors. Old man Foster, also, was a squatter and settled where Wash. McGinn now lives. Jesse Edwards, who killed the big bear, came the same year father did. He was a Revolutionary soldier and lived where David Collings now does. He died at the age of 1 10 years.

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 Jefferson Township - it names this place 3 more 3 times.

Fires near this place

9 since 2008

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 9 fires within 5 miles of Blue Creek between 2008 and 2020, burning about 190 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	4
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3
Recreation and ceremony	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
3 September 2018	Power generation/transmission/distribution	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	10106
6 April 2010	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	130 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	GWYNN ROAD
26 April 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	15 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
23 April 2008	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
18 April 2017	Debris and open burning	4.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	7927
8 March 2020	Recreation and ceremony	33 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	15455
30 March 2016	Debris and open burning	5.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	4027
23 March 2019	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	15033

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Adams County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 943 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 943 specimens collected within 10 miles of Blue Creek between 1866 and 1975: 543 Animalia, 264 Fungi, 111 Plantae, 25 Protozoa. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. Cronquist, A. P. Boesel and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Species	Year	Collected by	Where, as recorded
Puccinia lateripes Berk. & Ravenel	1879	A. B. Seymour	Adams County
Apiosporina collinsii (Schwein.) Höhn.	1900	W.A. Kellerman	Mineral Springs
Hymenochaete tabacina (Sowerby) Lév.	1929	Fulford, Margaret H.	Cedar Run
Asplenium ruta-muraria L.	1866	C. B. Dyer
Pleopeltis michauxiana (Weath.) Hickey & Sprunt	1866	C. B. Dyer
Stigmella platani Fuckel	1892	Kellerman W. A.	Mineral Springs
Phyllachora graminis (Pers.) Fuckel	1900	Kern W. A.	Mineral Springs
Puccinia smilacis Schwein.	1900	Kellerman W. A.	Adams Co.
Acroneuria frisoni Stark & Brown, 1991	1925	Clarence H. Kennedy
Dermatocarpon miniatum (L.) W.Mann	1925	Braun, E. Lucy	Turkey Creek
Scapania undulata (L.) Dumort.	1925	E. L. Braun	West tributary of Beech Fork
Crotalus horridus horridus	1926	Watters, G. T. (George Thomas)	Green Twp.: Long Lick Run, Adams Co., Ohio

All 943 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this place

12 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Blue Creek in 12 storm reports between 1999 and 2016: 7 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 2 flood, 1 flash 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
April 2011	Flash Flood	Blue Creek	$10,000	Emergency responders were called out for a vehicle stuck in high water.
June 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Blue Creek	$10,000	Several trees were uprooted. A camper and truck were damaged.
July 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Blue Creek	$3,000	Trees downed.
April 2011	Flood	Blue Creek	$2,000	Multiple roads were closed due to heavy rainfall.
June 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Blue Creek	$2,000	Winds were estimated at 60 mph.
July 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Blue Creek	$2,000	Trees were knocked down near Lynx.
July 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Blue Creek	$2,000	Large limbs were knocked down.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Blue Creek	$500	A tree was knocked down along Blue Creek Road.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Blue Creek	$500	A tree was downed on Blue Creek Road.
April 2014	Flood	Blue Creek	-	Blue Creek Road was closed due to high water caused by heavy rainfall.
May 2011	Hail	Blue Creek	-	no account filed
May 2010	Hail	Blue Creek	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Adams 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
Selig	2.8 miles	13
Jones Corner	3.5 miles	12
Sunshine	4.3 miles	13
Lynx	4.4 miles	12
Wamsley	4.6 miles	12
Cedar Mills	4.6 miles	12
Tulip	5.4 miles	15
Moore (historical)	5.4 miles	12

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 Blue Creek	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q4929006	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 1060886. 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.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.

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.