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

Pleasantville, Ohio

12 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1907 and the latest in 1984. It stands in Walnut Township. It lies in ZIP code area 43148. The Survey maps it on the Baltimore quadrangle. 934 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 909 feet above sea level.

Pleasantville within Fairfield County

Population over time

2 figures

Pleasantville fell from 960 to 934 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	960
2020	934	-26 (-3%)

Then and now

1907 to 1984

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 Pleasantville, surveyed 1984

Topographic sheet of Pleasantville, surveyed 1907

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

10,676 words on this township

A Complete History of Fairfield County, Ohio, published 1877 names this settlement in its chapter on Walnut Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Our nearest neighbor was Mr. Crossen, when we first settled on the bank of Pleasant Run. It was some years before we began to have comfortable roads. At first we blazed the trees so as to go from one house to another. The woods were full of wild-turkeys, which, when the corii got ripe, came into the fields and preyed upon it, and it was a part of the duty of the children to go and scare them away. In the spring and fall the crows and black-birds were often very destructive to the cornfields. In the spring they pulled up the little stalks to get the grain from the root, and in the fall they eat the corn from the cob when the grains were soft. Raccoons were also troublesome. We put up scare-crows, and went round the fields continually to frighten them away. But the greatest enemies the cornfields had in the fall of the year were the squirrels, which some years came in such numbers as to absolutely defy our vigilance.

Passage source: A Complete History of Fairfield County, Ohio, published 1877.

Mrs. Crossen was at one time coming through the woods to our house, when she discovered a bear in the act of killing a hog. Mr. Garner and my father, with us little fellows, went out with the gun and dogs, and soon found the bear. Upon seeing us approach, he left his prej;- and climbed up a tree. If he had had a competent understanding of the range and power of the rifle in the hands of a back-woods hunter, he would probably have sought another means of safety. As it was, the leaden messenger soon brought him lifeless to the ground. His weight was over three hundred. Wild-cats sometimes carried off our pigs.

Passage source: A Complete History of Fairfield County, Ohio, published 1877.

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 Walnut Township - it names this place 1 more 1 time.

Fires near this place

3 since 2008

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 3 fires within 5 miles of Pleasantville between 2008 and 2020, burning about 2 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2
Fireworks	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
1 August 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	15800
5 July 2020	Fireworks	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	15801
24 April 2008	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Wayne National Forest	BLACKFORK CAR FIRE

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Fairfield County

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 2,423 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 2,423 specimens collected within 10 miles of Pleasantville between 1843 and 1975: 1,978 Animalia, 337 Fungi, 100 Plantae, 6 Protozoa, 2 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. Gray; W. S. Sullivant, Albertin, Asa Gray; W. S. Sullivant 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
Cylindrosporium Grev., 1822	1893	unknown	Licking Reservoir
Albugo candida (Pers. ex J.F.Gmel.) Roussel	1896	F.L. Stevens	Lancaster
Cercospora circumscissa Sacc.	1896	F.L. Stevens
Bryoxiphium norvegicum (Brid.) Mitt.	1843	Asa Gray; W. S. Sullivant	near Lancaster
Helodium paludosum (Austin) Austin ex Broth.	1843	Asa Gray; W. S. Sullivant	in Cranberry Marsh, northern Ohio
Hypnum paludosum (Hedw.) P.Beauv.	1843	A. Gray; W. S. Sullivant	in Cranberry Marsh, northern Ohio
Phyllogonium norvegicum Brid.	1843	Gray, A.; W. S. Sullivant	near Lancaster
Bruchia flexuosa (Schwägr.) Müll.Hal.	1849	C. L. Lesquereux	Lancaster
Dicranodontium denudatum (Brid.) E.Britton	1849	C. L. Lesquereux
Aecidium compositarum Mart.	1883	W. A. Kellerman
Aecidium galiorum Pers.	1883	W. A. Kellerman
Aleurodiscus candidus (Schwein.) Burt	1883	W.A. Kellerman	Lancaster

All 2,423 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this place

9 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Pleasantville in 9 storm reports between 1996 and 2023: 7 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood, 1 tornado. The reports record 2 deaths and 1 injury. 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
January 1999	Flash Flood	Pleasantville	2 killed, 1 hurt	Heavy rain washed out part of Highway 188. Two cars fell into the washed out area with one person being injured and two killed.
April 2023	Tornado (EF0)	Pleasantville	$250,000	Tree and light structure damage was first observed at a property to the west of Lancaster Thornville Road NE, shortly after entering the town of Pleasantville. Due to the expansive fields southwest of town, this is believed to be the starting point for this brief and weak tornado. The tornado cut a path across South Main Street, through the southern portions of the town. Along South Main Street, lofted metal roof panels were observed scattered in nearby powerlines and trees. Farther to the east, between South Main Street and Lincoln Avenue, numerous trees were either snapped or uprooted. Light structure damage was also observed on Pleasant Court. The tornado entered nearby fields to the east of Lincoln Avenue. The final observed sign of damage was at a property south of Pleasantville Road NW, near the water tower, and this is where the tornado is believed to have dissipated. While this one mile long tornado is considered to be on the weaker side, a path of convergent damage was visible through the southern portions of Pleasantville. The strongest portion of the tornado was likely along South Main Street, with maximum estimated winds of 85 mph.
June 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Pleasantville	$5,000	Several trees were downed in the Pleasantville area.
July 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Pleasantville	$5,000	Trees were reported down and minor roof damage occurred due to damaging thunderstorm winds.
July 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Pleasantville	$4,000	no account filed
June 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Pleasantville	$3,000	Trees were downed near the intersection of State Routes 188 and 256.
May 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Pleasantville	$3,000	Trees and power poles were knocked down in town.
August 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Pleasantville	$2,000	Trees were reported down due to damaging thunderstorm winds.
August 2010	Thunderstorm Wind	Pleasantville	$1,000	Trees were reported down due to damaging thunderstorm winds.

Every storm recorded in Fairfield 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
Thurston	2.5 miles	12
Kellers Court	2.5 miles	12
New Salem	3.7 miles	12
Oakthorpe	4.6 miles	12
Baltimore	4.8 miles	12
Colfax	4.9 miles	13
West Rushville	5.1 miles	12
Dumontville	5.5 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 Pleasantville	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2672480	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 1061558. 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.