Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in McGuffey, OH

McGuffey is a village in Hardin County that was laid out in 1890 and named for John McGuffey, who donated land for a railroad depot in exchange for the naming rights.

A post office has operated at McGuffey since 1883, seven years before the village itself was laid out, and McGuffey was incorporated in 1896.

John McGuffey had first tried to drain the Scioto Marsh in the 1860s, and the larger drainage campaigns that followed turned thousands of acres of wetland into deep black muck farmland.

McGuffey became the center of the national onion trade from the turn of the 20th century until just after World War II, as the drained Scioto Marsh produced onions, potatoes, celery, and other crops shipped across the country.

In the summer of 1934, McGuffey was the site of the Great 1934 Onion Strike, one of the nation's first strikes by a union of agricultural workers; union president Okey Odell was badly beaten in the violence, an event now marked by a state historical marker in the village.

The 2020 census counted 466 people in McGuffey, and the 2010 census recorded 501 people living in 192 households.

McGuffey is home to Upper Scioto Valley High School, whose Rams nickname comes from the initials of Roundhead, Alger, and McGuffey-McDonald, the three schools that consolidated in 1965 to form the district.