Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Canal Winchester, OH

Canal Winchester is a city that straddles Franklin County and Fairfield County southeast of Columbus, placing most of it in Franklin County's Madison Township.

The town began when the Ohio & Erie Canal was routed through Reuben Dove's wheat field — Dove wanted to sue the state, but canal workers persuaded him he would do better to lay out a town at the midway point between Columbus and Lancaster.

Reuben Dove and John Coleman recorded the first plat for the town on November 5, 1828, and Dove named it Winchester after his father's hometown of Winchester, Virginia.

The first canal boat floated through Winchester in 1831, launching the community's canal-era prosperity.

When the post office was established in 1841, the town became Canal Winchester because Ohio already had five other towns named Winchester.

Canal Winchester was formally incorporated on May 31, 1866.

The Bergstresser/Dietz Bridge in Canal Winchester, built in 1887, is the only standing wooden covered bridge in Franklin County.

Canal Winchester is home to the National Barber Museum and Hall of Fame, founded in 1988 by barber Ed Jeffers, which preserves more than a thousand shaving mugs, 71 barber poles, and barbershop artifacts spanning centuries.

The city's historic core holds four districts on the National Register of Historic Places, and its historical society complex includes an 1879 grain elevator and an 1894 train depot.

Canal Winchester had 9,107 residents at the 2020 census, living in about 3,903 households, and about 86% of its homes are owner-occupied — a high share for the Columbus area.