Ohio is home to more Amish residents than any other state in the U.S., with approximately 76,200 people spread across dozens of settlements. The largest concentration is in Holmes County in northeast Ohio, but Amish communities stretch from Geauga County near Cleveland all the way down to Adams County in the state’s southwest corner.
Holmes County: The Largest Settlement in the World
The heart of Ohio’s Amish population is Holmes County, where over 36,000 Amish residents make up a significant share of the local population. This isn’t just the biggest Amish settlement in Ohio; it’s the largest in the world. The settlement dates back to 1808, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited Amish communities in North America.
The settlement doesn’t stop at the Holmes County line. It spills into four neighboring counties: Wayne, Tuscarawas, Coshocton, and Stark. Together, these five counties form what researchers call “Greater Holmes County,” which contains 238 church districts. Each district represents roughly 20 to 40 families, so that number reflects just how densely Amish families have settled across the rolling farmland of this region.
The towns you’ll encounter most often in this area are Millersburg (the county seat), Berlin, Walnut Creek, and Charm, all within Holmes County. Just across the border in Tuscarawas County, Sugarcreek is another major hub. These communities sit along or near US Route 39 and US Route 62, and they’ve developed a large tourism industry built around Amish culture, furniture shops, bakeries, and restaurants. In some Holmes County townships, all businesses except gas stations close on Sundays.
Geauga County: Northeast Ohio’s Second Hub
About 100 miles north of Holmes County, the Geauga County settlement is the fourth largest Amish community in the world. It’s centered around the village of Middlefield, though very few Amish families actually live within the village limits. Instead, they’re spread across the surrounding rural townships, including Huntsburg, Parkman, and Middlefield Township. Middlefield serves as the commercial hub where Amish residents shop, send their children to public schools, and conduct business.
The Greater Geauga settlement extends into neighboring Ashtabula, Portage, and Trumbull counties, with 105 church districts across the region. This community was established in 1886, nearly 80 years after Holmes County, and it has a noticeably different character. The landscape is flatter, the non-Amish neighbors are more suburban (Cleveland is less than an hour away), and the tourist infrastructure is smaller than what you’d find around Berlin or Sugarcreek.
Wayne County and the Surrounding Area
Wayne County, directly west of Holmes County, is part of the Greater Holmes settlement and home to a substantial Amish population of its own. The county seat, Wooster, is primarily a non-Amish city, but the rural areas surrounding it are heavily Amish. Wayne County is often described alongside Holmes and Tuscarawas as one of the three core counties of Ohio’s Amish Country.
A separate, smaller settlement called the Lodi/Homerville community sits in the northern part of Wayne County, extending into Ashland and Medina counties. Founded in 1952, it has 14 church districts and represents one of several mid-sized communities that developed as families branched out from the larger Holmes County settlement.
Smaller Settlements Across the State
Beyond the two major population centers, Amish families live in pockets throughout rural Ohio. In the southern part of the state, the Wheat Ridge community in Adams County is the heart of southwestern Ohio’s Amish country. Families from Holmes County began settling there in 1975, drawn by affordable farmland. Today the community is small but visible, with Amish-run furniture shops and bakeries along Route 32.
Several other small settlements are scattered through central and eastern Ohio. Knox County, just west of Holmes, has the Brinkhaven/Danville settlement (established 1990, four church districts). Coshocton County hosts part of the Greater Holmes settlement as well as the separate Glenmont/Brinkhaven community founded in 1994. New settlements continue to form as land prices in Holmes and Geauga counties push younger families to seek affordable acreage in more remote areas.
Why Ohio Has So Many Amish Residents
Ohio overtook Pennsylvania as the most populous Amish state in the U.S., a shift driven partly by the Amish community’s high birth rates (families of six to eight children are common) and partly by the availability of rural land. The 1808 settlement in Holmes County gave Ohio a two-century head start, and the region’s fertile soil and relatively inexpensive farmland kept attracting families.
The Amish population roughly doubles every 20 years nationwide, and Ohio has absorbed a large share of that growth. The state’s appeal is practical: farming remains viable in the hilly terrain of Holmes County and the flatter stretches of Geauga County, and Ohio’s rural road network accommodates the horse-and-buggy transportation that defines daily Amish life. The Ohio Department of Transportation actively tracks Amish population trends in part because of the infrastructure demands, including buggy-safe road shoulders and signage, that come with such a large community.