24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Oak Harbor, OH

Oak Harbor is a village in Ottawa County whose history began in October 1832, when Joseph Wardlow staked a claim and plotted a village on the Portage River in Salem Township, about ten miles inland from Lake Erie on the eastern fringe of the Black Swamp.

The settlement was incorporated on October 12, 1835 as the Village of Hartford, probably honoring Connecticut, from which many early Salem Township settlers had migrated, and W. W. Wardlow became its first mayor.

Because Ohio already had three other Hartfords, the Post Office Department demanded a new name, and in January 1845 the post office became Oak Harbor — "Oak" for the prominent timber around the village and "Harbor" for the river's importance; the village itself took the name in 1863 and was incorporated as Oak Harbor in 1871.

The Portage River flows through Oak Harbor on its way to Lake Erie at Port Clinton, and the village's early economy was built on sawmills and lumber floated downriver to Great Lakes and East Coast markets.

The Wheeling & Lake Erie railroad built through town in 1882, and by the 1880s Oak Harbor's population had reached 987 people, the majority of German descent.

Oak Harbor is fond of calling itself "the biggest little town in Ohio."

The 2020 census counted 2,821 people in Oak Harbor, and the 2010 census recorded 2,759 residents living in 1,153 households.

The village lies a short distance southwest of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, one of only two nuclear power plants in Ohio.

Oak Harbor's students attend the Benton-Carroll-Salem Local School District, which runs R.C. Waters Elementary School, Oak Harbor Intermediate School, and Oak Harbor High School, home of the Rockets.

The village celebrates the Oak Harbor Apple Festival each October, and the Ottawa County Fairgrounds about three miles east hosts the Ottawa County Fair every July.