Adams Crossing is located in Adams Township. Adams Township is in southern Butler County, Pennsylvania. We are bordered by Cranberry Township to our west, Middlesex Township to our east and Forward Township to our north. Richland and Pine Townships are our southern neighbors across the Butler County line in Allegheny County.  We are 25 miles to the north of our closest metropolitan city, Pittsburgh.

 

Adams Township, named for President John Quincy Adams, was created in 1854 from the western part of Middlesex Township and the eastern part of Cranberry Township, two of the original Butler County townships established in 1804. Butler County had only been formed in 1800 and the earliest settlement in Adams had occurred in 1796, responding to the passage by Congress of the Depreciation Lands Act of 1783, which authorized land grants to Revolutionary War Veterans.  All of southern Butler County was within the Depreciation Lands Area. The new township of 1854 contained 15,000 acres in a square configuration five miles on a side.  This area was largely wooded, bisected roughly north-south by Breakneck Creek, which rises in abutting Allegheny County and flows northward to empty into Connequenessing Creek north of Adams Township.  All but the eastern quarter of the township drains to Breakneck Creek.

 

Up until the last thirty years, there was not a good east-west connection across Adams Township. Even as suburban development pushed north from Pittsburgh along Routes 8 and 19 on either side of Adams, a trip between these two highways involved use of the two-lane country roads and a disjointed route that passed through Mars.  In the 1950’s, the present Route 228 alignment was built, providing a continuous connection between two major north-south four lane highways, avoiding congested Borough streets in Mars.

 

The influx of new residents into Adams shows that approximately 44% of the people who live in the Township have moved into their houses since 1980.