diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 6468e910a43..467969c845a 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -2,6 +2,10 @@
 All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
 This project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org/).
 
+## [2.5.1] - 2018-03-26
+### Fixed
+- `plotly.figure_factory.create_choropleth` now works in Windows without raising an OSError. The module now uses cross-platform path tools from `os` to manipulate and manage the shapefiles contained in this package.
+
 ## [2.5.0] - 2018-03-12
 ### Fixed
 - `import plotly.figure_factory` does not fail if `pandas` is not installed. See  https://github.com/plotly/plotly.py/pull/958
diff --git a/plotly/figure_factory/_county_choropleth.py b/plotly/figure_factory/_county_choropleth.py
index cc70eeb9fe7..fea9930f7bd 100644
--- a/plotly/figure_factory/_county_choropleth.py
+++ b/plotly/figure_factory/_county_choropleth.py
@@ -23,18 +23,21 @@ def _create_us_counties_df(st_to_state_name_dict, state_to_st_dict):
     abs_file_path = os.path.realpath(__file__)
     abs_dir_path = os.path.dirname(abs_file_path)
 
-    abs_plotly_dir_path = abs_dir_path[:abs_dir_path.find('/figure_factory')]
-    abs_package_data_dir_path = abs_plotly_dir_path + '/package_data/'
+    abs_plotly_dir_path = os.path.dirname(abs_dir_path)
+
+    abs_package_data_dir_path = os.path.join(abs_plotly_dir_path,
+                                             'package_data')
 
     shape_pre2010 = 'gz_2010_us_050_00_500k.shp'
-    shape_pre2010 = abs_package_data_dir_path + shape_pre2010
+    shape_pre2010 =  os.path.join(abs_package_data_dir_path, shape_pre2010)
+
     df_shape_pre2010 = gp.read_file(shape_pre2010)
     df_shape_pre2010['FIPS'] = (df_shape_pre2010['STATE'] +
                                 df_shape_pre2010['COUNTY'])
     df_shape_pre2010['FIPS'] = pd.to_numeric(df_shape_pre2010['FIPS'])
 
     states_path = 'cb_2016_us_state_500k.shp'
-    states_path = abs_package_data_dir_path + states_path
+    states_path =  os.path.join(abs_package_data_dir_path, states_path)
 
     # state df
     df_state = gp.read_file(states_path)
@@ -46,7 +49,7 @@ def _create_us_counties_df(st_to_state_name_dict, state_to_st_dict):
                  'cb_2016_us_county_500k.shx']
 
     for j in range(len(filenames)):
-        filenames[j] = abs_package_data_dir_path + filenames[j]
+        filenames[j] = os.path.join(abs_package_data_dir_path, filenames[j])
 
     dbf = io.open(filenames[0], 'rb')
     shp = io.open(filenames[1], 'rb')
diff --git a/plotly/version.py b/plotly/version.py
index e59b17b4f4c..b8c54948021 100644
--- a/plotly/version.py
+++ b/plotly/version.py
@@ -1 +1 @@
-__version__ = '2.5.0'
+__version__ = '2.5.1'