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

Rialto, Ohio

15 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1904 and the latest in 1986. It stands in West Chester Township. It lies in ZIP code area 45069. The Survey maps it on the Glendale quadrangle.

Rialto within Butler County

Then and now

1904 to 1986

The same ground, surveyed 82 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Rialto, surveyed 1986

Topographic sheet of Rialto, surveyed 1904

Topographic sheets covering this place

15 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

16,981 words on this township

A History and Biographical Cyclopædia of Butler County, Ohio : with Illustrations and Sketches of Its Representative Men and Pioneers, published 1882 names this settlement in its chapter on West Chester Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

Rialto is owned by the Friend & Fox Paper Company, and consists of three mills, about seven miles from Hamilton, on the edge of the canal. It manufactures book and news paper. Capacity, five thousand and five hundred pounds per day. The new Crescent mill, built in 1881, is a mile below the others, and is illuminated by electric lights, and filled with the finest machinery made in the East. It manufactures roofing and wrapping papers. The original manufactory was a grist-mill, begun by Taylor Webster, who did a good business for many years. He sold to Beatty & Cooper, who sold to Friend & Fox.

Passage source: A History and Biographical Cyclopædia of Butler County, Ohio : with Illustrations and Sketches of Its Representative Men and Pioneers, published 1882.

past. Like all saw-mills of pioneer days, it was to be run with water, but instead of a sluggish stream to furnish power for the wheel, a mere tub-full of that element was thought to be sufficient to run it forever, with an occasional drop now and then added to make good what might be lost by evaporation. The contrivance consisted of an upright saw, with all its ordinary attachments; a large - tub was placed aloft and filled with water. This tub | held about one hundred barrels, and was filled by the proprietor and his devoted wife, it was said, who was to share honors, undoubtedly world-renowned, if this thing worked. The expectant day arrived; logs filled the yard below; the mill had been erected, but not weatherboarded or roofed; the tub filled, and pump fixed in its place. It was supposed that the same force of water used to run the wheel would also run the pump, and throw the water back as fast it escaped. On trial, of course, it proved a failure; the logs in the yard rotted, the mill tumbled down of old age, and no trace of its former existence is now visible.

Passage source: A History and Biographical Cyclopædia of Butler County, Ohio : with Illustrations and Sketches of Its Representative Men and Pioneers, published 1882.

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 West Chester Township.

Specimens collected near this place

12 of 369 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 369 specimens collected within 10 miles of Rialto between 1835 and 1975: 325 Animalia, 34 Plantae, 9 Fungi, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. R. Gaufin, A.R. Gaufin, H.H. Ross, Arden R. Gaufin 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
Leptostromataceae	1883	Prof. W. A. Kellerman
Phyllosticta Pers., 1818	1883	W. A. Kellerman	Lancaster.
Carex careyana Torr. ex Dewey	1835	Collector unknown	In ditione "Miami" civitatis Ohio.
Carex convoluta Mack.	1835	Collector unspecified	"Miami"
Carex gracillima Schwein.	1835	B. Frank	In ditione "Miami" civitatis Ohio.
Calidris melanotos (Vieillot, 1819)	1879	W. Douglass	Jones Station
Coluber constrictor Linnaeus, 1758	1879	not recorded	Hughes
Diadophis punctatus arnyi Kennicott, 1859	1879	not recorded	Hughes
Lampropeltis triangulum (Lacépède, 1789)	1879	not recorded	Hughes
Mimus polyglottos (Linnaeus, 1758)	1879	Porter collection, J.B.	LOCNM: Jones
Spiza americana (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)	1879	Porter, J.B.
Storeria dekayi (Holbrook, 1839)	1879	not recorded	Hughes

All 369 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this place

4 since 2015

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Rialto in 4 storm reports between 2015 and 2020: 3 hail, 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 2020	Flash Flood	Rialto	$100,000	All of the businesses along Windisch Road were evacuated due to rising water along Mill Creek, affecting about 1000 individuals.
August 2015	Hail	Rialto	-	Hail was reported at the intersection of Cresentville and Chesterdale Roads on the Butler/Hamilton County Line.
August 2015	Hail	Rialto	-	no account filed
August 2015	Hail	Rialto	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Butler 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
Port Union	0.8 miles	15
Beckett Ridge	1.7 miles	15
Westchester	2.3 miles	15
Olde West Chester	2.4 miles	15
Jones (historical)	2.7 miles	16
Tylersville	2.7 miles	15
Stockton	2.8 miles	16
Flockton	2.8 miles	15

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 1075195. 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.