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

Eldorado, Ohio

9 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1953 and the latest in 1986. It stands in Monroe Township. It lies in ZIP code area 45321. The Survey maps it on the New Madison quadrangle. 458 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,135 feet above sea level.

Eldorado within Preble County

Population over time

2 figures

Eldorado fell from 509 to 458 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	509
2020	458	-51 (-10%)

Then and now

1953 to 1986

The same ground, surveyed 33 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Eldorado, surveyed 1986

Topographic sheet of Eldorado, surveyed 1953

Topographic sheets covering this place

9 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

2,642 words on this township

History of Preble County Ohio: Her People, Industries and Institutions, published 1915 names this settlement in its chapter on Monroe Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Charles Armantrout. near Hamburg: William Brown, in section 29; John Jellison, in section 23; Isaiah Adams, near Hamburg; Jacob Baker, in section 16; Aaron Crisler, in section 26, and the Murdocks, # west of Eldorado, probably were the first settlers arriving in the township, the date of their arrival being from two to four years before the War of 1812. Josiah Davisson, who settled in section 14 in 1816, is said to have found quite a number of neighbors scattered about the township. Elias Bunger arrived about

Passage source: History of Preble County Ohio: Her People, Industries and Institutions, published 1915.

The first school house was built, about 1825, in section 10, Jerry Pence, teacher, others soon following. Under our present school law eight good country school houses have been erected in the township, but already a movement is being agitated either to centralize the schools of the township or allow the western half to be centralized with Eldorado, the eastern half to be centralized with West Manchester, where there already exist excellent village schools.

Passage source: History of Preble County Ohio: Her People, Industries and Institutions, published 1915.

The first house erected in Eldorado, one mile south of the north county line, was built by Leroy R. McWhinney in 1852. McWhinney also started a store and mill, depot and grain house, near the track of the Dayton & Western railroad, which then had just been completed; then laid out the town on his own land and continued business for a number of years.

Passage source: History of Preble County Ohio: Her People, 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 Monroe Township - it names this place 7 more 7 times.

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 387 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 387 specimens collected within 10 miles of Eldorado between 1876 and 1974: 381 Animalia, 5 Plantae, 1 Fungi. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by Cole, G., F. White, G. R. Austing 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
Hedwigia ciliata (Hedw.) P.Beauv.	1876	not recorded	New Paris
Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae Schwein.	1928	Mendenhall E. W.	New Paris
Macrochilo absorptalis Walker, 1859	1929	Klots, A.B.	Lewisburg
Phalaenostola eumelusalis Walker, 1859	1929	Klots, A.B.	Lewisburg
Phalaenostola larentioides Grote, 1873	1929	Klots, A.B.	Lewisburg
Campostoma anomalum anomalum	1930	MB Trautman	Whitewater River, at New Paris, Jefferson Twp
Catostomus commersonnii commersonnii (Lacepède, 1803)	1930	MB Trautman	Whitewater River, at New Paris, Jefferson Twp
Chrosomus erythrogaster (Rafinesque, 1820)	1930	Trautman, M. B. (Milton Bernard) & Foster, R. (Robert)	East Fork Whitewater River, at New Paris, ~0.4 mi NW of New Paris, Jefferson township
Cottus bairdii Girard, 1850	1930	MB Trautman	Whitewater River, at New Paris, Jefferson Twp
Etheostoma blennioides Rafinesque, 1819	1930	MB Trautman	Whitewater River, at New Paris, Jefferson Twp
Etheostoma caeruleum Storer, 1845	1930	MB Trautman	Whitewater River, at New Paris, Jefferson Twp
Etheostoma nigrum Rafinesque, 1820	1930	MB Trautman	Whitewater River, at New Paris, Jefferson Twp

All 387 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this place

1 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Eldorado in 1 storm report between 1995 and 1995: 1 hail. 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 1995	Hail	Eldorado	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Preble 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
Hamburg	1.0 miles	9
West Manchester	2.6 miles	9
Brinley	3.5 miles	9
Browns	4.0 miles	8
Ebenezer	4.3 miles	8
Gettysburg	4.9 miles	8
Orangeburg (historical)	5.8 miles	8
New Paris	7.0 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 Eldorado	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2472380	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 1061050. 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.