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CENTER TOWNSHIP

COURTESY OF BEAVER COUNTY BICENTENNIAL ATLAS

 

Although Center Township is relatively new among the family of communities making up Beaver County, her traditions go back to the earliest period of Ohio Valley History. Prior to colonial explorers, native Indians traveled the "Glade Path", an important trail crossing the future township North to South.

One family of settlers in Beaver Valley, the Bakers, made their home in 1774 in the hills above Raccoon Creek near what is now Pleasant Drive in Center Township. At that time, all lands South of the Ohio had been claimed by Virginia, with the seat of Government at Pittsburgh.

During the course of the Revolutionary War, a fort was constructed at Beaver, Fort McIntosh, to aid settlers in defense against the Indians and the British at Detroit. Supplies were brought from Pittsburgh along the old Indian path. The trace was renamed Brodhead's Road, after the Commander of Fort McIntosh.

When Beaver County was formed in 1800, three Townships were created on the Southside: Hanover, First Moon and Second Moon. Later (in 1812) the area was reorganized into four Townships. One of these was Moon, the parent of Center.

Over the years, other communities were formed from Moon: Raccoon Township in 1837; Phillipsburg Borough in 1840 (now Monaca), Potter Township in 1912. In 1914, a serious dispute among Moon Township residents split the Township, separating the heavily populated suburban section in the North from the much larger sparsely populated region in the South and West. On November 24, 1914, after a second election, the court decreed that the larger Southern section be known as Center Township. Eighteen years later, the remaining portion of Moon in the north was annexed by Monaca, becoming that Borough's Fourth and Fifth Wards (Monaca Heights and Colona Heights).

The new Township lay dormant for thirty or forty years, until the automobile made suburban living fashionable. Growth then came rapidly. The 60's and 70's brought the establishment of two colleges: Penn State's Beaver Campus and the Community College of Beaver County, a new high school, a Vocational-Technical High School for Beaver County, the Gateway Rehabilitation Center, and one of the largest shopping centers in Western Pa.-The Beaver Valley Mall. Today, Center can take her place among the larger and more progressive communities in Beaver County as new housing plans develop around the township.