Connoquenessing boasts industrial, recreational history
You'd never know it by the scores of kayaks and canoes that can be seen floating along on a balmy summer day, but the Connoquenessing Creek has seen its share of history since Native Americans bestowed upon it their word for “A long way straight.”
The name's spelling has no doubt vexed second-grade students at Connoquenessing Elementary School in the Butler Area School District and Connoquenessing Valley Elementary School in the Seneca Valley School District, but the 40-mile waterway's history demonstrates its importance to Butler County over the years.
Beginning just above the Oneida Dam in Oakland Township and snaking wildly to its terminus, the Beaver River in Ellwood City, Lawrence County, the Connoquenessing Creek has been both famous and infamous over the millennia.
Undoubtedly, the most notorious incident near the banks of the Connoquenessing occurred in Forward Township on Dec. 27, 1753, and could have changed the course of U.S. history.
A Native American who had volunteered to lead a young George Washington and Christopher Gist to the Allegheny River while the two were on a return trip from Erie suddenly and inexplicably turned and fired a round from his musket at Washington.
This is an excerpt from an article in a series about the Connoquenessing. Subscribe online or in print to read the full article and have access to future articles from the series as they are published.
