Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Johnstown Johnstown, OH

Johnstown is a small city in Monroe Township in Licking County that was a village for more than two centuries before officially becoming a city on October 21, 2021, after the 2020 census pushed its population past 5,000.

Johnstown sits on land in the U.S. Military Tract, set aside to pay Revolutionary War soldiers; its 4,000-acre tract was deeded by President John Adams to Kentucky veteran John Brown.

Dr. Oliver Bigelow of New York bought the 4,000-acre tract on December 7, 1810, for $10,000, laid out the village in 1813, donated its streets, town square and cemetery, and served as both its first doctor and its first mayor.

Bigelow died on November 5, 1817, and his tombstone in the cemetery he set aside reads 'Dr. Oliver Bigelow, proprietor of Johnstown'; Bigelow Cemetery now holds more than 275 early residents and veterans of three wars.

The town square Bigelow donated is now Bigelow Park, and the Monroe Township Hall and Opera House built on it in 1883-84 - with a 325-seat opera house upstairs - is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and now houses the Johnstown Historical Society's museum.

Johnstown grew slowly for most of its history - just 278 people in 1880 and 906 in 1920 - before Columbus-area growth reached it in recent decades.

The 2020 census counted 5,182 people in Johnstown, up from 4,632 in 2010, and Census Bureau survey estimates for 2020-2024 counted about 1,968 households; by July 2025 the population was estimated at 5,476.

In January 2022, Intel announced it had selected a site about a mile from Johnstown, in the Licking County portion of the New Albany International Business Park, for its planned Ohio semiconductor manufacturing campus.

Johnstown-Monroe High School, home of the Fighting Johnnies, is the only high school in the Johnstown-Monroe Local School District; its current building opened in 2018 and enrolls roughly 490 students.

The Johnnies' chief athletic rivals are the Northridge Vikings.