Thurston, OH

Thurston is a Fairfield County village where the 2020 census counted 603 residents. It began as Bush City, laid out in 1881 beside the railroad's Bush Station. The line had started as the Atlantic and Lake Erie Railroad, was later known as the Ohio Central, and reached Columbus by a completed branch in 1880. A petition to keep the names Bush City or Hadley Junction ran into postal-name conflicts, so Thurston became the name on the post office and village map. Natural gas was found nearby in 1888 and piped to Columbus in 1890, adding another brief industrial chapter.

Railroad work once organized nearly every part of village life. Thurston was a terminal for four New York Central divisions, and the village history records fourteen passenger trains stopping daily in 1920; by the early 1930s, four trains still stopped for mail and passengers. At least 150 local workers held railroad jobs during that period. Passenger service ended in 1950, yet the grain elevator built in 1920 remains in business. Thurston's older identity is easy to trace through the depot, the rail corridor, the elevator, and the roads that carried shoppers and farm goods into the village.