There was already a community scattered across the countryside west of the Scioto River when Ostrander appeared on the map. But there was no Ostrander. That changed in the early 1850s, when plans for a railroad across western Delaware County determined which settlements would prosper, which would fade, and where an entirely new town would rise.
Ostrander was that new town. More than 170 years later, the railroad is gone, but the village it created is growing again. Its story stretches from pioneer settlements and competing hamlets to a bustling turn-of-the-century business center, a devastating downtown fire and a modern population boom that has more than doubled the community’s size since 2000.
Before Ostrander
The broader history of Scioto Township goes back decades before the village itself. A 1908 Delaware County history identifies Richard Hoskins, a Welsh immigrant who settled near the mouth of Boke’s Creek in 1806, as the township’s first settler. Other families followed from Ireland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky and elsewhere. Settlement gradually moved toward what would become Ostrander. But the area’s first village was not Ostrander. Fairview, later known as Edinburg, developed about a mile north. With 27 lots, it had aspirations of becoming an important local center. Millville, later Warrensburg, also developed nearby. Then came the railroad.
A town created by the tracks
The railroad bypassed Edinburg and ran instead through what had been largely undeveloped land to the south. That decision changed the future of western Delaware County.
Ostrander was laid out in 1852, with the railroad running directly through the new community. The village’s 2023 comprehensive plan says establishment of the Ostrander train depot helped the settlement become the largest community in Scioto Township. The 1908 county history put it more colorfully. It described the site as once being a “bare clay knob” and said Edinburg’s prospects were effectively destroyed when the railroad went through Ostrander instead.
Even the village’s name is tied to the railroad. For generations, some residents believed Ostrander had been named for Jacob Ostrander, a local carpenter whose distinctive tree-shaped grave marker stands in Fairview Cemetery. Village research instead points to Shelemiah Ostrander, the civil engineer associated with surveying the area for the railroad. Early county histories also state that the town was named for the railroad surveyor, although they did not give his first name.
Building a community around the depot
Once the railroad established Ostrander’s reason for being, a town quickly developed around it. Businesses, churches, schools and homes followed. The Little Mill Creek Presbyterian congregation, organized decades earlier, relocated from Edinburg to Ostrander in 1862 as the center of population shifted toward the railroad community. Ostrander formally became an incorporated village on May 18, 1875. Its first village council met the following year, establishing the mayor-council form of government the village still uses.
The railroad did far more than carry passengers. It connected surrounding farms with larger markets and helped turn Ostrander into the commercial center of western Delaware County.
By around 1900, the village was flourishing. Its businesses and industries over the years included sawmills, a creamery, livery stables, a hotel, bank, grocery stores, restaurants, stockyards and other enterprises. Ostrander even had a Masonic Hall and an opera house capable of seating more than 300 people. It was an impressive array for a village that had not existed half a century earlier. The railroad had done exactly what Edinburg’s residents had once feared. It had moved the commercial center of the township.
The fire that changed downtown
Then came one of the defining events in Ostrander history. In 1925, a fire began in a small restaurant on Main Street in the town square and spread through the business district. The destruction was extensive. According to the village’s official history, the entire business block was leveled except for the livery stable. Portions of the block were rebuilt during the following years, creating much of the appearance the center of Ostrander retains today.
Another structure permanently altered the village skyline in 1948. That year, the Ostrander Farmers Exchange erected its tall concrete grain elevator. Visible for miles, the structure became a fitting landmark for a village whose prosperity had long depended on the relationship between agriculture and transportation.
When the railroad disappeared
For nearly 120 years, the railroad had defined Ostrander. Then the trains stopped. Rail operations through the village ended in 1971. The transportation system that had determined Ostrander’s location, fueled its commercial rise and eclipsed neighboring settlements no longer passed through town. A railroad trestle over Blues Creek remains as a physical reminder of that era.
Yet Ostrander did not disappear with the railroad. For decades it remained a small, relatively stable Delaware County village. Then, as the 21st century began, another transformation took hold.
A small village begins growing again
Ostrander has become part of Delaware County’s broader growth story. The village expanded geographically through annexations and added new residential development. Its comprehensive plan notes particularly strong residential growth since 2010, along with continuing development pressure.
The population numbers show how dramatic the change has been. Ostrander had 405 residents in 2000. By 2010, the population had reached 643. The 2020 Census counted 1,094 residents, meaning the village had grown by roughly 170 percent in only two decades.
That growth creates an intriguing historical symmetry. In the 1850s, a new transportation corridor suddenly changed the fortunes of a rural corner of Delaware County. The railroad redirected people, commerce and development toward a newly platted village. Today, the forces are different. Central Ohio’s expansion and Delaware County’s residential growth are pushing farther into the county’s western communities.
But Ostrander is once again adapting to forces larger than itself. The tracks that gave birth to the village may have disappeared, but their influence remains embedded in its street pattern, its history and even its name. Ostrander did not simply happen to grow beside a railroad. The railroad is the reason Ostrander was there to grow at all.
