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

Ray, Ohio

13 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1913 and the latest in 1980. It lies in ZIP code area 45672. It lies in Good Hollow. The Survey maps it on the Byer quadrangle. It stands 594 feet above sea level.

Ray within Vinton County

Then and now

1913 to 1980

The same ground, surveyed 67 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheets covering this place

13 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.

Fires nearby

32 since 2006

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 32 fires within 5 miles of Ray between 2006 and 2020, burning about 296 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
Debris and open burning	20
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	7
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1
Recreation and ceremony	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
24 September 2007	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
23 September 2007	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
17 July 2016	Equipment and vehicle use	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	5145
13 July 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	100 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
2 May 2008	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
21 April 2015	Recreation and ceremony	2.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	1001
17 April 2016	Debris and open burning	26 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	4571
17 April 2016	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	4427

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Vinton County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 1,383 shown

Museums hold 1,383 specimens collected within 10 miles of Ray between 1878 and 1975: 1,169 Animalia, 192 Plantae, 20 Fungi, 2 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by 'Odell, D., A. Cronquist, A. M. Evans 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
Calodon	1936	Cooke, William Bridge	Little Salt Creek
Calvatia caelata (Bull.) Morgan	1936	Cooke, William Bridge	Little Salt Creek
Houstonia caerulea L.	1878	Guttenberg, G.	Hamden
Krigia biflora (Walter) S.F.Blake	1878	Guttenberg, G.	Hamden
Luzula multiflora (Ehrh.) Lej.	1878	None	Hamden
Plantago lanceolata L.	1878	Guttenberg, G.	Hamden
Robinia hispida L.	1912	Crawford, C.G.	southern Ohio
Trametes robiniophila Murrill	1916	MCCLEDROTLE G. A.?	Coalton
Coleosporium viburni Arthur	1926	Hedgcock G. G.	Jackson 7 miles Northwest
Moxostoma erythrurum (Rafinesque, 1818)	1927	Trautman, M. B. (Milton Bernard) & Foster, R. (Robert)	Pigeon Creek, within Vinton Co, Vinton County, township n/a
Regulus satrapa Lichtenstein, 1823	1928	Walker, C. F. (Charles F.)	Canter's Cave, Jackson, Ohio, USA
Bufo fowleri Hinckley, 1882	1929	Walker, C. F. (Charles F.), Thomas, J. (John) & Pontius	White's Gulch, Liberty Twp., Jackson Co., Ohio

All 1,383 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms nearby

5 since 2007

The National Weather Service names Ray in 5 storm reports between 2007 and 2025: 2 flood, 1 hail, 1 thunderstorm wind, 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
May 2010	Flood	Ray	$175,000	The first report of flooding was around midday as the headwaters of Raccoon Creek, including Wiselabout Creek, flooded Route 278. Numerous other creeks overflowed and blocked roads.
June 2010	Flash Flood	Ray	$10,000	Small streams flooded roads, including sections of Route 93 and Route 324 near Hamden and Duncas.
July 2008	Thunderstorm Wind	Ray	$5,000	Two microbursts hit the Chief Logan Reservation, a summer camp for Boy Scouts. It occurred during the predawn hours. Luckily, only one scout received a minor injury, despite the large number of occupied tents in the damage paths. One large tree fell right onto a tent cot, but the boys had left earlier to seek safer shelter. \|\|There was extensive softwood tree damage found in 2 distinct paths in the campground. Numerous pine trees were snapped and uprooted in a diverging pattern. Three tents were destroyed by fallen trees. The damage paths of both microbursts were approximately 500 yards in length with a width of 25 to 40 yards.
July 2025	Flood	Ray	-	High water was observed on Poland and Richland Roads in the community of Ray.
April 2007	Hail	Ray	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Vinton 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
Bee (historical)	3.4 miles	13
Ratcliffburg	4.1 miles	14
Richland	4.7 miles	12
Allensville	6.3 miles	16
Cox (historical)	7.3 miles	14
Eagle Mills	8.6 miles	14
Hamden	8.8 miles	12
Royal	9.2 miles	16

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 Ray	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q7297109	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 1061587. 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.