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

Zaleski, Ohio

15 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1904 and the latest in 2002. It stands in Madison Township. It lies in ZIP code area 45698. It stands on Wheelabout Creek. The Survey maps it on the Zaleski quadrangle. 230 people lived here at the 2020 count.

Research this city

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Zaleski within Vinton County

Population over time

2 figures

Zaleski fell from 278 to 230 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	278
2020	230	-48 (-17%)

Then and now

1904 to 2002

The same ground, surveyed 98 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.

Topographic sheet of Zaleski, surveyed 2002

Topographic sheet of Zaleski, surveyed 1904

Compare 1904 against another survey:

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.

Photographs

4 photographs, 1936

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.

Planting trees at Zaleski Forest Project, Vinton County, Ohio
Jung, Theodor, 1936. Library of Congress

General view. Zaleski forest project, Vinton County, Ohio
Jung, Theodor, 1936. Library of Congress

Fires nearby

20 since 2012

The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 20 fires within 5 miles of Zaleski between 2012 and 2020, burning about 223 acres in total. None started naturally. 3 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.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	6
Power generation/transmission/distribution	5
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4
Arson/incendiarism	3
Equipment and vehicle use	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
2 May 2018	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	12125
9 April 2013	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	22 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
21 April 2020	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	15691
21 April 2013	Arson/incendiarism	5.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
18 April 2013	Equipment and vehicle use	1.5 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
12 April 2018	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	11525
10 April 2014	Debris and open burning	1.5 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	not named
8 March 2016	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	40 acres	Ohio Department of Natural Resources	3634

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Vinton County

Specimens collected nearby

12 of 1,220 shown

Museums hold 1,220 specimens collected within 10 miles of Zaleski between 1900 and 1975: 1,121 Animalia, 53 Plantae, 44 Fungi, 2 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by Adams, K.; Bitner, E., Adams, W., Atkinson 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
Mycosphaerella dearnessii M.E.Barr	1936	C. C. Green	Waterloo State Forest
Acordulecera dorsalis	1900	not recorded	Vinton, Vinton Co., OH, Vinton, Vinton, Ohio, United States
Acordulecera mellina	1900	not recorded	Vinton, Vinton Co., OH, Vinton, Vinton, Ohio, United States
Aglaostigma Kirby, 1882	1900	not recorded	Vinton, Vinton Co., OH, Vinton, Vinton, Ohio, United States
Agrypon melleum (Cresson, 1872)	1900	not recorded	Vinton, Vinton Co., OH, Vinton, Vinton, Ohio, United States
Andrena helianthi Robertson, 1891	1900	not recorded	Vinton, OH, Ohio, United States
Arge clavicornis (Fabricius, 1781)	1900	not recorded	Vinton, Vinton Co., OH, Vinton, Vinton, Ohio, United States
Argyra minuta Loew, 1861	1900	none specified	Vinton, OH, Ohio, United States
Boettcheria cimbicis (Townsend, 1892)	1900	Hine	Vinton, Vinton Co., OH, Vinton, Vinton, Ohio, United States
Calobata antennaepes Say, 1823	1900	Hine, J. S. (James Stewart)	Vinton, Vinton Co., OH, Vinton, Vinton, Ohio, United States
Capnochroa LeConte, 1862	1900	not recorded	Vinton, OH, Ohio, United States
Cephalops Fallén, 1810	1900	Hine, J. S. (James Stewart)	Vinton, Vinton Co., OH, Vinton, Vinton, Ohio, United States

All 1,220 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms nearby

16 since 1994

The National Weather Service names Zaleski in 16 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 9 thunderstorm wind, 3 flash flood, 3 flood, 1 hail. 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
April 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	$500,000	Winds measured at 80 mph at the Zaleski State Forest Ranger Station from a microburst. Trees were downed in the vicinity, a mobile home was destroyed, and a barn roof was removed.
April 2005	Flash Flood	Zaleski	$5,000	Small streams, such as Wheelabout Creek, that flow into Racoon Creek overflowed onto roads. Rains of 1.75 to 2.25 inches fell in less than 3 hours. Route 50 was blocked.
June 1994	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	$5,000	Trees were downed.
September 2020	Flash Flood	Zaleski	$2,000	State Route 278 flooded at Lake Hope between New Plymouth and Zaleski.
April 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	$2,000	Trees and a power line were blown down along State Route 278.
June 2008	Flash Flood	Zaleski	$2,000	Small streams flooded roads and fields, but no evacuations were reported.
August 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	$2,000	no account filed
August 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	$2,000	no account filed
February 2018	Flood	Zaleski	$1,000	State Route 278 was closed due to high water from Wheelabout Creek.
April 2025	Flood	Zaleski	-	State Route 677 was closed from US 50 to Adleman Street due to flooding.
November 2017	Flood	Zaleski	-	Following flash flooding early on the 6th, high water lingered along Raccoon Creek into the early morning hours of the 9th. At Bolins Mills, the creek crested at 15 feet, or one foot above bankfull, during the afternoon of the 8th, and returned within its banks just before sunrise on the 9th. The flooding along Raccoon Creek cause water to pool in several low spots along Route 50 and nearby agricultural land.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	-	Trees fell down along Route 50.
July 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	-	Trees were blown down.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	-	Trees were blown down along Route 677.
June 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Zaleski	-	Trees and large branches were blown down.
May 2001	Hail	Zaleski	-	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
Ural (historical)	1.8 miles	15
Red Diamond	2.7 miles	15
Prattsville	3.0 miles	13
Vinton	3.4 miles	13
Elk Fork	3.9 miles	15
Hope	3.9 miles	15
Creola	4.4 miles	15
McArthur	5.1 miles	13

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 Zaleski	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2668542	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 1077248. 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.