Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Buchtel, OH

Buchtel is a village in Athens County (with a portion extending into Hocking County) in Ohio's Hocking Valley, just northeast of Nelsonville, and it was a center of coal mining in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Buchtel was laid out in 1876 and named for John R. Buchtel, a representative of the Akron Iron Company, which owned a large amount of land in the vicinity; an earlier name for the village was Bessemer.

A post office called Buchtel has been in operation since 1879, and the village's name is pronounced "BUUK-tel."

Buchtel was developed to support coal mining, and in 1884 its miners went on strike while the company brought in Pinkerton guards to protect strikebreakers known as "Blacklegs," an episode captured in a famous period photograph.

Buchtel's population peaked at 1,180 residents in 1910 during the coal boom, but the 2020 census counted just 518 people in the village.

The 2010 census counted 558 people living in 235 households in Buchtel, spread across only about 0.49 square miles of land along Snow Fork, a tributary of Monday Creek.

Buchtel's children are served by the Nelsonville-York City School District, and the district's campus borders the village even though the school property itself sits within Nelsonville's city limits.

Water, sewer, and police services for Buchtel are provided by the neighboring city of Nelsonville, while fire protection comes from the York Township Volunteer Fire Department.