Welcome to Oakwood: the small city on the hill south of Dayton

Oakwood is small enough to cross on foot in an afternoon and old enough to have a story on almost every corner. The City of Oakwood counts just 2.2 square miles of land, and the 2020 census counted 9,572 people living on it. Dayton wraps around the north and east, Kettering the south and west, and Oakwood sits on the high ground between them, a fact that mattered a great deal after the 1913 flood, when developers sold homes here on the strength of being well above downtown.

The city describes itself as a set of interlocking neighborhoods where schools, shops, churches, parks and services are all within a few blocks of each other. That is not a slogan so much as a daily routine: Oakwood has no school buses, because children walk or bike to class, and plenty of them walk home for lunch.

How the city is laid out

Far Hills Avenue, State Route 48, runs north to south through the middle of Oakwood and splits it into an east side and a west side. Historically the two halves were different places: the east side was flat farmland, while the hillier west side was dug for stone and gravel, and the old quarry ground along Coolidge Drive later filled with houses. Far Hills, Shafor, Triangle and Forrer are laid out as boulevards with landscaped medians, and Shafor Boulevard is where many residents walk the dog or go for a run.

The main shopping district lines Far Hills between East Drive and Peach Orchard Avenue. Many of its shops began life as houses, and you can still see the old homes in their back and side walls. Park Avenue, which meets Far Hills by the city building, is the closest thing Oakwood has to a civic square, with City Hall at 30 Park Avenue and a cluster of small businesses nearby.

Getting around is mostly a matter of walking, biking or a short drive. For public transit, Oakwood is served by Greater Dayton RTA Route 6, which runs along Far Hills. Since September 6, 2026 the route detours onto Shroyer Road for about half a mile south of Oakwood, but its stops and schedule inside the city did not change.

Life through the seasons

Oakwood keeps time by its city services as much as by the calendar. In fall, public works crews collect leaves across the whole city and turn them into mulch that residents can pick up again in spring; in 2022 that came to more than 9,500 cubic yards, a remarkable pile for a city this size. Winter brings one of Oakwood's more unusual habits: the city clears snow from public sidewalks, not just streets, and it still offers back door trash and recycling pickup. This past spring the city also began pre-wetting road salt with liquid deicer, helped by a $5,000 Ohio EPA grant, to use less salt and keep chloride out of local streams.

Summer belongs to the Gardner Pool at the Oakwood Community Center and to Saturday mornings at the Oakwood Farmers' Market, which runs from spring into October on Orchard Drive behind the Far Hills shops. The school year opens with the annual Ice Cream Social, and on a Sunday evening in early December the city's Holiday of Lights gathers families at the Shafor Park shelter.

Places that define Oakwood

Hawthorn Hill, the house Orville Wright shared with his sister Katharine and their father from 1914, stands at Park and Harman avenues. It is a National Historic Landmark run by Dayton History, and tours leave by shuttle from Carillon Historical Park in Dayton. A few blocks away, the Wright Memorial Public Library at 1776 Far Hills Avenue opened in 1939 in Katharine Wright Park, with Orville serving on the library board while it was planned. The Oakwood Historical Society keeps the Long-Romspert House Museum at 1947 Far Hills, a farmhouse begun in 1863.

A few independent businesses have become part of the furniture. Dorothy Lane Market, the family-owned grocer whose Oakwood store at 2710 Far Hills opened in 1953, is where many neighbors run into each other, whether at the sandwich station or the grill that cooks a cut from the meat case to order. Ashley's Pastry Shop on Park Avenue has been family-owned since 1982 and is known for its sand tart cookies and custom cakes. Blue Turtle Toys at 2314 Far Hills has sold toys, books, games and puzzles from around the world since 1999. And The Little Exchange at 45 Park Avenue is a gift shop with wedding and baby registries whose proceeds go to Dayton Children's Hospital.

Other independents fill out the picture. Also on Park Avenue, Lula Bell Whimsical Cards and Gifts sells greeting cards with Amy Gantt's original artwork, and Kubik Fine Books at 24 Park Avenue deals in antiquarian books. On Far Hills, The Spicy Olive lets you taste olive oils and balsamic vinegars before they are bottled, and the veteran-owned Jaffe Jewelers repairs, appraises and designs jewelry. At the north end of town, Tastefully Roasted Coffee on Oakwood Avenue has been pouring coffee since 2017.

Getting settled

The city's New Residents page gathers the practical steps in one place: utility sign-up, trash days, large-item pickup, dog registration and an invitation to the New Resident Breakfast. Oakwood runs its own municipal court and one of only about 32 fully consolidated police and fire departments in the country, a public safety department created in 1924.

The Wright Memorial Public Library is the place for story times, book clubs, tech help, passport services and a Memory Lab for digitizing old photos and video. For local news, The Oakwood Register, which calls itself the independent voice of the community, comes out every Wednesday and is carried to homes across the city.

The city's own sum-up is that Oakwood is a neighborly place where merchants know customers by name. Walk Far Hills on a Saturday morning, stop at the library on the way home, and you will see what it means.