St. Paris, OH

St. Paris is a Champaign County village in western Ohio, with the 2020 census counting 1,882 residents. The village began as New Paris in 1831, founded by David Huffman, then added Saint after another New Paris created a mail problem. That small naming fix is very St. Paris: a French-sounding name attached to a Midwestern crossroads, with an older Native landscape and first settlers arriving in 1797 underneath it. Railroad changed the pace in the 1840s: the Columbus and Piqua line was built along the village's southern edge, and the later Columbus, Piqua and Indiana Railroad connected local farm products and travelers to a larger route.

Today downtown, Graham High School, Kiser Lake State Park, Davey Woods State Nature Preserve, the library, and the village museum give St. Paris several different reasons to be on the map. St. Paris's local scoop is an Ohio village with a mail-era name change, a railroad past, and a lake-and-woods setting just beyond Main Street.