Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Utica, OH

Utica is a village straddling Licking and Knox counties in central Ohio, along the North Fork of the Licking River.

Utica was platted in 1815 by Major William Robertson and first named Wilmington, but because Ohio already had a Wilmington it was renamed for Utica, New York, the former home of several early settlers.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Utica was the largest hand-blown window glass manufacturing town in the United States, thanks to local silica sand and natural gas — an industry that collapsed with the 1929 crash and new glassmaking technology.

Before the Civil War, Utica was an important stop on the Underground Railroad.

Utica is the home of Velvet Ice Cream, founded in 1914 by Lebanese immigrant Joseph Dager, who started out hand-cranking ice cream in the basement of a local confectionery; the Dager family still runs the company four generations later.

Velvet Ice Cream's headquarters is Ye Olde Mill, an 1817 grist mill on more than 20 acres just south of the village that the company acquired in 1960; it draws about 150,000 visitors a year and houses Ohio's only ice cream museum.

Every Memorial Day weekend the village hosts the Utica Ice Cream Festival, a tradition dating to the 1970s that celebrates the hometown ice cream company with a parade and festivities.

The population of Utica was 2,064 at the 2020 census.

Utica had 841 households at the 2010 census, with an average household size of 2.50 people.

Students in Utica attend Utica High School, part of the North Fork Local School District.