Zanesville is a city in Muskingum County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Located at the confluence of the Licking and Muskingum rivers, the city is approximately 52 miles (84 km) east of Columbus and had a population of 24,765 as of the 2020 census, down from 25,487 as of the 2010 census. Historically the state capital of Ohio from 1810 to 1812, Zanesville anchors the Zanesville micropolitan area (population 86,183) and is part of the greater Columbus Marion Zanesville combined statistical area.
At a Glance
- County: Muskingum County
- County seat of Muskingum County
- State: Ohio
History of Zanesville
Zanesville was named after Ebenezer Zane (1747 to 1811), who had blazed Zane’s Trace, a pioneer trail from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Maysville, Kentucky, through present day Ohio. In 1797, he remitted land as payment to his son in law, John McIntire (1759 to 1815), at the point where Zane’s Trace met the Muskingum River. With the assistance of Zane, McIntire platted the town and opened an inn and ferry by 1799. In 1801, Zanesville was officially renamed, formerly Westbourne, the chosen name for the settlement by Zane.
From 1810 to 1812, the city was the second state capital of Ohio. The National Road courses through Zanesville as U.S. Route 40. The city grew quickly in the 1820s through 1850s. Zanesville and Putnam (eastern side of Muskingum River), from the 1840s until the American Civil War broke out, was part of the Underground Railroad. In excess of 5,000 Union soldiers, along with hundreds of townsfolk, were stationed in the Zanesville area to protect the city in 1863 during Morgan’s Raid. Novelist Zane Grey, a descendant of the Zane family, was born in the city.
After the Civil War, the city grew in size and gained prominence in the State for manufacturing and textiles. The city was also notoriously known for its bootlegging activities in the Prohibition era. From the 1820s until the 1970s, downtown Zanesville was the premiere economic center of the city with various factories, offices, small to large stores, many hotels, over a dozen stages and movie theaters, nearly twenty churches, and nearby neighborhoods (inhabited mainly by persons of Irish or German ethnicity).
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Zanesville, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.