Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Sinking Spring Sinking Spring, OH

Sinking Spring is a village in Highland County, Ohio, and with just 118 residents at the 2020 census it is one of the smallest incorporated villages in the state.

The village was named for a losing stream — a spring-fed creek that sinks into the ground — near the original town site.

A post office called Sinking Spring has been in operation since 1817, making it one of the oldest continuously operating post offices in this part of Ohio.

Sinking Spring has been counted in every federal census since 1830, when it had 109 residents, and its population peaked at just 239 in 1980.

The 2010 census counted 133 people in 53 households in the village, and the population has declined steadily since its 1980 peak.

The village covers only 0.47 square miles of land in the rolling hills of Highland County, with Ohio State Route 41 running down its Main Street.

Sinking Spring Methodist Church, constructed in 1844, is the oldest church building in Highland County still being used as a church.

The village's Octagonal Schoolhouse, built in 1831, is a rare eight-sided school building, and the former Sinking Spring High School was destroyed by fire on March 25, 1998.

Sinking Spring earned a small place in pop culture when it was noted in the 1985 Sesame Street movie Follow That Bird.

Early Ohio political leader and jurist Charles Willing Byrd, who served as secretary of the Northwest Territory and acting governor of Ohio, made his home in Sinking Spring.