Portsmouth, Ohio

This curated hub for Scioto County, Ohio brings together the page's documented record links, visible map or image evidence where published, and routes to related local records.

• Open map evidence
• Research guide
• Scioto County County hub

Portsmouth fell from 20,226 to 18,252 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.

The same ground, surveyed 55 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

1926 1981

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.

• 1926 USGS Greenup quadrangle1:62500
• 1926 USGS Greenup quadrangle1:62500
• 1926 USGS Greenup quadrangle1:48000
• 1930 USGS Greenup quadrangle1:62500
• 1930 USGS Greenup quadrangle1:62500
• 1930 USGS Greenup quadrangle1:62500
• 1953 USGS Portsmouth quadrangle1:24000
• 1953 USGS Portsmouth quadrangle1:24000
• 1957 USGS Huntington quadrangle1:250000
• 1957 USGS Huntington quadrangle1:250000
• 1957 USGS Huntington quadrangle1:250000
• 1960 USGS Huntington quadrangle1:250000
• 1968 USGS Portsmouth quadrangle1:24000
• 1968 USGS Portsmouth quadrangle1:24000
• 1981 USGS Ironton quadrangle1:100000

Taken for the Office of War Information and the Farm Security Administration, who photographed the country between 1935 and 1944. Works of United States government photographers, with no known restriction on use. Each opens its catalogue record.

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 133 fires within 5 miles of Portsmouth between 1997 and 2020, burning about 4,797 acres in total. None started naturally. 24 were 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.

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

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

• Stockham
• Vera Junction
• West Portsmouth
• Alexandria
• Shannoah Town (historical)
• Sugar Grove

Every fire recorded in Scioto County

Museums hold 1,313 specimens collected within 10 miles of Portsmouth between 1884 and 1975: 1,194 Animalia, 69 Plantae, 43 Fungi, 4 Protozoa, 2 Unrecorded, 1 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by ?, Ahles, H.E., Anson A. Hinkley 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
	Pyganodon grandis (Say, 1829)	1884	H. Mores	Scioto River
	Lycogala epidendrum (L.) Fr., 1829	1896	not recorded	Scioto River
	Peronospora polygoni Halst.	1897	F.L. Stevens
	Campeloma Rafinesque, 1819	1885	Ch. R. Orcutt	Scioto River
	Puccinia recondita Roberge ex Desm.	1889	Craig M.	Franklin Co. "hayden's Falls" on Scioto River
	Ambystoma opacum (Gravenhorst, 1807)	1897	Hine, J. S. (James Stewart)	Portsmouth, Scioto Co., Ohio
	Sialia sialis (Linnaeus, 1758)	1897	Henninger, W. F. (Walther Frederick)	South Webster, Scioto, Ohio, USA
	Sturnella magna (Linnaeus, 1758)	1897	Henninger, W. F. (Walther Frederick)	South Webster, Scioto, Ohio, USA
	Sympetrum Newman, 1833	1897	J. Hine	Portsmouth
	Sympetrum obtrusum (Hagen, 1867)	1897	J. Hine	Portsmouth
	Philohela minor (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)	1898	Henninger, W. F. (Walther Frederick)	Bloom Switch, Scioto, Ohio, USA
	Melospiza georgiana (Latham, 1790)	1899	Henninger, W. F. (Walther Frederick)	Wheelersburg, Scioto, Ohio, USA

All 1,313 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Portsmouth: 2 producers, 1 plant, 1 prospect. 3 still produce. What was taken out: Clay, Iron, 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.

Every working recorded in Scioto County

The National Weather Service names Portsmouth in 98 storm reports between 1995 and 2024: 44 thunderstorm wind, 27 hail, 14 flash flood, 12 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.

Every storm recorded in Scioto County

1 paper published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 0 issues, 0 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.

Front pages of the local paper, read from the Library of Congress scans: 4 issues spread across its run from 1850 to 1850, 14,665 words in total. Each is reproduced on its own page, exactly as the recogniser returned it.

These pages read less well than anything else here, and the number is worth stating: about three words in four come through cleanly, against nine in ten for the building records. An 1896 broadsheet sets eight-point type in seven columns on microfilm, which is the hardest thing in this archive to read by machine. We tested our own recognisers against the Library's and they were not better, so the Library's text is what appears, with the wholly unreadable columns removed. Read it as a guide to what the paper covered, and follow the link to the scan before quoting anything.

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

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.

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 1061567. 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.