Block
Portage, Ohio
14 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1901 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Liberty Township. It lies in ZIP code area 43451. The Survey maps it on the Bowling Green South quadrangle. 398 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 686 feet above sea level.
Population over time
2 figuresPortage fell from 438 to 398 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 | 438 | |
| 2020 | 398 | -40 (-9%) |
Then and now
1901 to 1994The same ground, surveyed 93 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.
Compare 1901 against another survey:
Topographic sheets covering this place
14 sheetsMatched 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.
- 1901 USGS Bowling Green quadrangle1:62500
- 1903 USGS Bowling Green quadrangle1:62500
- 1903 USGS Bowling Green quadrangle1:62500
- 1903 USGS Bowling Green quadrangle1:62500
- 1956 USGS Toledo quadrangle1:250000
- 1956 USGS Toledo quadrangle1:250000
- 1956 USGS Toledo quadrangle1:250000
- 1956 USGS Toledo quadrangle1:250000
- 1958 USGS Bowling Green South quadrangle1:24000
- 1958 USGS Bowling Green South quadrangle1:24000
- 1961 USGS Toledo quadrangle1:250000
- 1986 USGS Findlay quadrangle1:100000
- 1986 USGS Findlay quadrangle1:100000
- 1994 USGS Bowling Green South quadrangle1:24000
What happened here
An account from the chapter on Liberty township, The inset identifies its exact source book and publication year.
Jonathan Salsbury
JONATHAN SALSBUEY and the Salsbury farm in Liberty township, will long be remembered by the old settlers. Old man Salsbury, as he was familiarly called many years ago, was rather a remarkable man and had endured hard work and man-killing hardships enough to have killed four or five ordinary men.
In the county-history sources
69,517 words on this townshipReminiscences of Pioneer Days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley : a Pioneer Scrap Book, published 1909 names this settlement in its chapter on Liberty Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.
THE first white settler in what is now Liberty township was Collister Haskins, in the spring of 1824. In the following September, with the help of kind Indians and friends from Watcrville, he built a log cabin on the west side of the established route of the Findlay pike and on the south bank of the Portage river, and moved in with his family, who had resided in Waterville.
Passage source: Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley : a Pioneer Scrap Book, published 1909.
The next settler in Liberty was Geo. Mercer, the first of the large Mercer settlement in that township, to locate there, who came from New Lisbon, also in the spring of 1833, and entered the land upon which he made his home. He came with two yoke of oxen and a wagon by the way of Woodville, making the trip of 200 miles from New Lisbon in 11 days. From Woodville he came up the Portage river on a road cut. through a few days previous by Adam Phillips, who settled in Portage township, and the next day cut a road from there to Mr. Haskins', making the trip from Woodville in two days. His family stayed at Mr. Haskins' and he immediately set to work with the assistance of Peter Johnson and Adam Phillips of Portage township, and Mr. Haskins, and soon had a pole cabin built on his own land and moved in with his family. The same spring he '"broke up" 15 acres of prairie land belonging to Mr. Haskins and planted it to corn; using five stout yoke of oxen and a big old-fashioned wooden plow to break up the prairie and says he raised about half a crop. He raised a family of nine children.
Passage source: Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley : a Pioneer Scrap Book, published 1909.
The second, section 26, provides, "That laws shall be passed by the legislature which shall secure to each and every denomination of religious societies, in each surveyed township, which is now or may hereafter be formed in the state, an equal participation, according to their number of adherents, of the profits arising from the land granted by congress for the support of religion, agreeable to the ordinance or act of congress making the appropriation."
Passage source: Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley : a Pioneer Scrap Book, published 1909.
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 Liberty Township - it names this place 11 more 11 times.
Fires near this place
3 since 2002Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 3 fires within 5 miles of Portage between 2002 and 2002, burning about 8 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 |
|---|---|
| Equipment and vehicle use | 2 |
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 August 2002 | Equipment and vehicle use | 4.0 acres | Ohio State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 31 October 2002 | Equipment and vehicle use | 4.0 acres | Ohio State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
| 23 October 2002 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | Ohio State Fire Marshal's Office | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Specimens collected near this place
12 of 741 shownRegional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 741 specimens collected within 10 miles of Portage between 1894 and 1975: 701 Animalia, 28 Fungi, 10 Plantae, 1 Unrecorded, 1 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by Allen, J. M., B. BURGER, Baumgartner, L. 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.
| Image | Species | Year | Collected by | Where, as recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Uromyces lespedezae-procumbentis (Schwein.) Lagerh. | 1901 | Kellerman, W.A. | Bowling Green |
 | Physoderma zeae-maydis F.J.F.Shaw | 1912 | E. G. Arzberger | Station grounds |
 | Icterus galbula galbula (Linnaeus, 1758) | 1894 | Geo W. Dean | Wayne |
 | Calicium lenticulare Ach. | 1895 | E. E. Bogue | |
 | Ictalurus punctatus (Rafinesque, 1818) | 1897 | Osburn, R. C. (Raymond Carroll) & Williamson, E. B. | Big Darby Creek, no more precise locality beyond township, near Darbydale OH, Pleasant Township |
 | Aristida purpurascens Poir. | 1901 | William Kellerman | Near Bowling Green |
 | Phyllachora lespedezae (Schwein.) Sacc. | 1901 | W. A. Kellerman | Bowling Green |
 | Uromyces lespedezae (Thüm.) Peck | 1901 | W. A. Kellerman | Bowling Green |
| Melampsora abietis-canadensis (Farl.) C.A.Ludw. | 1902 | W.A. Kellerman | Bowling Green | |
| Melampsora populina (Jacq.) Lév. | 1902 | W. A. Kellerman | Bowling Green | |
| Stemphylium cucurbitacearum Osner | 1915 | Gilbert W. W. | Bowling Green | |
 | Ambystoma tigrinum (Green, 1825) | 1917 | E L MOSELEY | BOWLING GREEN |
All 741 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
Mines and quarries near this place
1 within 5 milesRegional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Portage: 1 plant. All of them still produce. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portage Plant | Stone, Crushed/Broken | Plant |
Storms near this place
7 since 2003Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Portage in 7 storm reports between 2003 and 2020: 3 hail, 3 thunderstorm wind, 1 tornado. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 2013 | Thunderstorm Wind | Portage | $10,000 | A trained spotter reported several small trees down in Portage. |
| July 2007 | Thunderstorm Wind | Portage | $2,000 | A tree and large limb were reported down. |
| May 2011 | Thunderstorm Wind | Portage | $1,000 | Thunderstorm winds downed a large tree. |
| October 2020 | Hail | Portage | - | Penny-size hail in Portage. |
| June 2012 | Hail | Portage | - | Half dollar sized hail was observed. |
| May 2007 | Tornado (EF0) | Portage | - | A weak tornado touched down in a field about a mile north of Portage. The tornado remained on the ground for about a quarter mile and had a path 20 to 30 yards wide. No damage occurred. |
| August 2003 | Hail | Portage | - | Penny to nickel size hail was observed. |
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.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christy | 1.4 miles | 14 | |
| Mermill | 2.0 miles | 14 | |
| Rudolph | 2.2 miles | 14 | |
| Meadowvale | 2.3 miles | 14 | |
| Wintergarden Heights | 2.5 miles | 14 | |
| Arlington Woods | 2.7 miles | 14 | |
| Westgate Homes | 3.1 miles | 14 | |
| Ducat | 3.2 miles | 14 |
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 Portage | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q388547 | 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 1061566. 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.
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.