Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Bethesda, OH

Bethesda is a village in west-central Belmont County, Ohio, in Goshen Township, and it is part of the Wheeling, West Virginia metropolitan area.

Bethesda has gone by three different names in its history: Burrs Mills, Fairmount, and finally Bethesda.

When the railroad reached the area in 1852, the Central Ohio Railroad named its station Burr's Mills in honor of Merrick S. Burr, who ran a sawmill nearby.

In 1855, Burr laid out the village itself and called it Fairmount, because of its high and beautiful location - the village sits at about 1,221 feet above sea level.

The name Bethesda came from a Methodist church and post office located about two miles south of town; when the post office moved into the village it kept the name, and by the late 1800s Bethesda had won out for the whole town.

Bethesda was incorporated as a village in 1910.

Bethesda had 1,211 residents at the 2020 census, and the 2010 census counted 1,256 people in 549 households within the village's 0.64 square miles.

Bethesda is home to Epworth Park, founded in 1870 as the Burr's Mills Camp Meeting Grounds by the Methodist Church, whose 20.5-acre historic district holds 59 Victorian cottages built mostly between 1875 and 1930 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Epworth Park hosted its first Chautauqua-style gathering in 1891 and drew speakers including William McKinley, William Jennings Bryan, and evangelist Billy Sunday; it still celebrates Chautauqua Days every July.

In 1920 the town installed an E. Howard town clock atop the Orrison Cigar Company building on Main Street, dedicated to Bethesda's World War I veterans; after years in storage, the restored clock was rededicated in 2017 at the Murray Family Memorial Plaza.