Newton Falls

Newton Falls may refer to:

Newton Falls, Ohio

Newton Falls is a village located within Newton Township in Trumbull County, Ohio, United States. The population was 4,795 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The village is known for its ZIP code, which is 44444, and for its covered bridge, which is the second oldest in the state of Ohio.

The village earned its name from the two sets of falls within the village, each on different branches of the Mahoning River.

History

Newton Falls was likely named for the first school teacher, Newton, and the falls south of the Covered Bridge which is presently under water from the dam constructed along First Street. It grew in part from factors such as the river and its falls, steel manufacturing, and the proximity of the nearby Ravenna Training and Logistics Site.

On May 31, 1985, an F5 tornado struck the city as part of The 1985 United States-Canadian tornado outbreak, a deadly series of tornadoes that swept through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, Canada. The tornado to hit Newton Falls was the only F5 to hit Ohio that day. The tornado damaged most of the downtown area destroying dozens of homes, damaging the Senior and Junior High Schools (destroying the gymnasium and rendering the Junior High unusable), and devastating many businesses. Remarkably, no deaths were attributed to the tornado. There were between 70 and 80 injuries in the entire town. They discovered that just in Newton Falls alone, 400 families were homeless and the entire central business district had been destroyed. They indicated that warning sirens were the main reason the death toll, which was zero, wasn't that high. "If it hadn't been for the (warning) sirens, the death toll" that was zero "might have been higher," stated Ohio National Guard Major Calvin Taylor. There was even television footage of one of the freight trains being taken from its tracks.