Potter Township is a second class township which was formed in 1912 from parts of Raccoon and Moon Townships. (Raccoon had been formed from Moon and Green Townships in 1833, and both of these had been sectioned off in 1812 from Second Moon.) Potter Township did not change significantly until around 1930 and 1940 when two large industrial plants settled along the Ohio River; one was the zinc smelting plant of the St. Joseph Lead Company and the other was the Koppers Company (now Arco/Polymers, Inc.). Brick buildings built in 1870 still remain on the St. Joe Lead Company property that were once the county home-"the poor house" as it was usually called. The original county home, erected nearby in 1853, was constructed of wood.
The zinc smelting plant also occupies what once was the thriving village of Bellowsville. A school, cemetery, and a number of houses were located at this point, which was connected to Vanport by a ferry. Nothing remains. A later village nearby was Josephtown, which had a post office of the same name.
One of Potter Township's most interesting landmarks was the Hostetter House, built in the late 1890's. After inheriting a fortune from his father's manufacture of "Hostetter's Bitters," Theodore R. Hostetter purchased 265 acres of land (the present site of the Arco/Polymers Plant) and built a huge, 25-bedroom mansion constructed of California redwood and containing at least one board from every state in the Union. Although the Hostetters lived in Pittsburgh, where their famous "stomach bitters" was made, they used their country estate in Potter Township as a summer home and enjoyed many a Gay Nineties party with their weekend guests from Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, nothing remains of the Hostetter House; it burned down in 1936.
During the forties, one of the more familiar sites in Potter Township was Kobuta-a World War II defense plant and housing development built by the Koppers Company. Kobuta was one of the plants chosen by the government to manufacture butadiene, a major component of synthetic rubber which was so vital to America's war effort. The name, "Kobuta," was thus a combination of Koppers and BUTAdiene. After the war, the Kobuta housing development disappeared almost as fast as it had grown up, and the Koppers Company began to manufacture plastics. Since that time, the name of the Company has changed twice, first to Sinclair-Koppers and then to Arco/Polymers, Inc. The Montgomery Dam and Locks, completed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1936, is also located in Potter Township. The rest of the township is basically rural residential although a few areas are still being farmed. The Township is now part of the Center Area School District.