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

Cloverdale, Ohio

12 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1909 and the latest in 1986. It stands in Perry Township. It lies in ZIP code area 45827. It stands on Blanchard River. The Survey maps it on the Continental quadrangle. 170 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 719 feet above sea level.

Cloverdale within Putnam County

Population over time

2 figures

Cloverdale grew from 168 to 170 between 2010 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. 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
2010	168
2020	170	+2 (+1%)

Then and now

1909 to 1986

The same ground, surveyed 77 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Cloverdale, surveyed 1986

Topographic sheet of Cloverdale, surveyed 1909

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

1,613 words on this township

History of Putnam County, Ohio : Its Peoples, Industries, and Institutions, published 1915 names this settlement in its chapter on Perry Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Franconia was the first town laid out in the township. It was laid out by Amos Kendall in 1837 and the first store was kept by Parlee Carlin. A double log cabin, which was featured by Howe as a "Home in the Wilderness," was erected by Sebastian Shroufe, and P. B. Holden later kept a tavern in the same building. While Franconia was a flourishing little center of trade for a number of years, it has long since disappeared and nothing now remains of what was once hoped would be a substantial town. Other towns in this township include Cloverdale (Drucilla), Dupont, Cascade and Huntstown.

Passage source: History of Putnam County, Ohio : Its Peoples, Industries, and Institutions, published 1915.

The first blow which Dupont had to endure was the failure of the timber and, in consequence, the removal of the stave factories, her chief industry. The second blow came with the building of the Nickel Plate railroad across the Clover Leaf at Continental, and the final step was the construction of the Findlay, Ft. Wayne & Western through Cloverdale, just two and onehalf miles south of the village.

Passage source: History of Putnam County, Ohio : Its Peoples, Industries, and Institutions, published 1915.

Cloverdale is situated at the junction of the two railroads crossing the township and dates its existence from 1891. It was surveyed and platted by E. W. Dimmick for W. H. and E. M. Mozier, Tunis and Nora Truax and Austin and Mary Combs, the proprietors. The first postoffice was called Drucilla. Although there had been a town here since the construction of the Cloverleaf railroad in 1877, which was known as Evansville, it was never platted, and when the new town was platted the name Cloverdale was given and the former name gradually disappeared. It was incorporated on April II, 1902.

Passage source: History of Putnam County, Ohio : Its Peoples, Industries, and Institutions, published 1915.

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 Perry Township.

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 114 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 114 specimens collected within 10 miles of Cloverdale between 1893 and 1969: 114 Animalia. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by Adler, K. K., Blyth & Katz, Creamer, D. 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
Lampsilis ventricosa (Barnes, 1823)	1893	not recorded	Blanchard River
Ambloplites rupestris (Rafinesque, 1817)	1893	P. Kirsch	Auglaize River, Oakwood, Ohio
Cambarus rusticus Girard, 1852	1893	P. Kirsch	Sugar Creek, Cloverdale
Ericymba buccata Cope, 1865	1893	P. Kirsch	Auglaize River, Oakwood, Ohio
Ictalurus punctatus (Rafinesque, 1818)	1893	P. Kirsch	Auglaize River, Oakwood, Ohio
Lithobates pipiens (Schreber, 1782)	1893	not recorded	Cloverdale, Auglaize River
Notropis whipplei (Girard, 1856)	1893	P. Kirsch	Auglaize River, Oakwood, Ohio
Noturus flavus Rafinesque, 1818	1893	P. Kirsch	Auglaize River, Cloverdale, Ohio
Acris crepitans Baird, 1854	1930	Walker, C. F. (Charles F.)	Sugar Cr. Twp: near Vaughnsville, Putnam Co., Ohio
Rana clamitans Latreille, 1801	1930	Walker, C. F. (Charles F.)	Sugar Creek Twp.: near Vaughnsville, Putnam Co., Ohio
Pseudacris triseriata (Wied-Neuwied, 1838)	1931	Walker, C. F. (Charles F.)	Ottawa Twp., Putnam Co., Ohio
Rana pipiens Schreber, 1782	1931	Walker, C. F. (Charles F.)	Ottawa Twp., Putnam Co., Ohio

All 114 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this place

8 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Cloverdale in 8 storm reports between 1997 and 2025: 3 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
July 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Cloverdale	$3,000	Trees downed.
April 2025	Flood	Cloverdale	$1,000	Photos on X show water covering portions of the road in Cloverdale, west of SR 634.
July 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Cloverdale	-	The public reported significant damage to the roof of a residence, with parts of the roof being blown off. Trees were also damaged on the property as well as bending a TV antenna.
June 2015	Flash Flood	Cloverdale	-	Torrential rainfall fell well south of the county across much of Allen county, Ohio which ran off into the Ottawa River. The runoff from this rainfall rapidly moved upstream into the county and caused a rapid increase in river and creek levels around the town of Kalida. High water impacted nearly the entire town, with some locations seeing several feet of flood water closer to the river edges. Of greater significance was that the high water levels caused flood waters to cover all of the state and U.S. routes that intersect within the town limits. This essentially cut the town off from the surrounding communities due to a combination of the high water on the road and travel of vehicles through the water causing wave action which increased local flooding issues.
June 2015	Flood	Cloverdale	-	While overall rainfall amounts were not as significant as counties to the south of Putnam county, river and creek levels increased across mainly the southern portion of the county, causing several road closures due to high water. The most significant flooding occurred in the Kalida area, with a separate entry under Flash Flood outlining the details.
April 1998	Hail	Cloverdale	-	Hail up to 1 inch in diameter reported in Cloverdale by Assistant Emergency Manager.
May 2000	Hail	Cloverdale	-	no account filed
May 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Cloverdale	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Putnam 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
Cascade	0.8 miles	12
Huntstown (historical)	1.1 miles	12
Franconia (historical)	1.5 miles	12
East Mandale	2.0 miles	12
Dupont	2.5 miles	12
Muntanna	3.1 miles	13
Montana (historical)	3.5 miles	13
Dorninton	4.6 miles	11

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 Cloverdale	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2668741	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 1079575. 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.

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.