Dresden is a village in Jefferson and Cass townships in Muskingum County, Ohio, United States, along the Muskingum River at the mouth of Wakatomika Creek. It was incorporated upon March 9, 1835. The population was 1,529 at the 2010 census.

Dresden is located upon or close the site of a Shawnee (Native American) village known as Wakatomika, which gave its proclaim to Wakatomika Creek, the creek that empties into the Muskingum River close the northern edge of the village. These were the easternmost of the Shawnee villages, and the house of the most unfriendly of that tribe. David Zeisberger, the Moravian missionary, preached there in 1773 in an effort to convert them; but the wrongs curtains to Chief Logan and new Ohio Native Americans were discussed at this place taking into account much rancor, and skirmish parties had been going out from here next to the white settlers in rancor of attempts by the Delaware (tribe) to intercede. On August 7, 1774, Colonel Angus McDonald brought 400 men from Fort Pittsburg in the Wakatomica Campaign of Lord Dunmore’s War to battle the Shawnee. The unity of Wakatomika, as without difficulty as four additional villages, was burned to the sports ground and three chiefs were taken prisoner.

In 1799, Jonathan Cass became one of the first settlers in the area, claiming 4000 acres of land. His family joined him in 1801. In 1875, the remains of Major Jonathan Cass were removed to the Dresden cemetery, by Dr. Edward Cass, and beyond the remains of the associates in their perfect resting place has been erected a magnificent monument by the Cass family. Beneath the name of Jonathan Cass is this inscription: “He was a soldier at the battle of Bunker Hill; an manager of the Revolution, and of the army, which, under General Wayne, gave harmony to the frontier. From New England, he emigrated to this allocation of the wilds of the Northwestern Territory. On the military estate he purchased, he lived a peaceful and quiet moving picture thirty years, until death claimed him for a victim.

Seth Adams of Boston also arranged the area in 1799 and is said to have cultivated the first tomatoes in the county from seed he got from New Orleans. He was after that one of the first to tree-plant apple trees and helped to introduce full blooded Merino sheep to the United States. He furthermore built one of the first houses in Dresden.