A Century of Stillness
For its first 150 years, Cranberry Township barely grew. The population at the 1810 census was 543. 1 By 1850 it had climbed to 2,236, but the 1854 subdivision that carved Adams, Forward, and Jackson townships from Cranberry's original eighty-one square miles immediately dropped the count to 931. 1 2 In 1909, S.H. McKee estimated the population at 1,065. 3 In 1940, it stood at 959. 4
This was agricultural country, pure and simple. In 1916, 137 of the township's 180 property owners were farmers. 4 A 1918 milestone records the arrival of the first tractor. 4 Telephone service did not reach the township until 1920, and rural electricity arrived only in 1935. 4
The Turnpike Changes Everything
The transformation began with concrete. In 1950, the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened with a Route 19 exit serving Cranberry Township. 4 For the first time, the township sat at the intersection of a major east-west highway and the old north-south Route 19 corridor -- the same Venango Path the Senecas had traveled two centuries earlier.
The effect was gradual at first. The population in 1950 was 1,045. 4 But in 1957, the Fernway Plan opened -- a suburban housing development that brought 480 new homes and pushed the population to 2,000 for the first time in the township's reduced boundaries. 4 By 1960, Cranberry had 3,596 residents. 5
Then came the interstates. Interstate 79 opened in 1971, creating a high-speed north-south corridor through the township. 4 The population leaped to 4,873 in 1970 and then to 9,000 by 1976. 4 That year, the township relocated its offices to accommodate the growing bureaucratic demands of a community that was doubling every decade.
The final piece of the highway puzzle fell into place in 1989 when Interstate 279 opened, completing a direct expressway connection from Cranberry to downtown Pittsburgh. 4 The population in 1990 was 14,816. 5 Cranberry was no longer a remote farming township. It was a commuter suburb -- and increasingly, a destination in its own right.
The Corporate Migration
As the population grew, businesses followed. By 1982, more than 300 businesses were operating in the township. 4 But the true economic transformation came with the arrival of major corporate headquarters.
MSA Safety established its Cranberry Township site in 1985 as part of the company's Instrument Division. The 320-acre Cranberry Woods campus eventually combined class-A office space with advanced manufacturing and the John T. Ryan Research and Development Lab. In 2010, MSA relocated its corporate headquarters staff from O'Hara Township to the Cranberry campus. 6
The biggest prize came in 2006, when Westinghouse Electric Company selected Cranberry for its new world headquarters. Construction began on an 83-acre campus at Cranberry Woods in July 2007. By December 2010, the nearly one-million-square-foot facility was fully occupied. 6 A Westinghouse memo to employees stated the main reason for the move was "the rapid expansion of the global nuclear industry." 6 Westinghouse became the largest employer in Cranberry Township.
In 2024, Giant Eagle relocated its corporate headquarters to Cranberry Woods, joining Westinghouse and MSA Safety in the business park that had become one of the Pittsburgh region's premier corporate addresses. 6
Pittsburgh's Richest Suburb
The numbers tell the story of acceleration. The 2000 census recorded 23,625 residents. 5 By 2010: 28,098. 5 The 2020 census: 33,087. 5 As of 2024, the median household income reached $125,126, with roughly 2.5 percent of families below the poverty line. 5
Cranberry Township now hosts over 1,000 businesses and approximately 20,500 jobs, with significantly more workers commuting into the township than out of it. 5 The UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, opened in 2015 as the Pittsburgh Penguins' practice facility, brought professional sports to a community that was farmland within living memory. 5 A $44.3 million interchange connecting Route 228 and I-79 opened in 2004. 4 The MSA Thruway, a $12 million tunnel completed in 2021, connected I-79 to the Cranberry Springs development without a single traffic signal. 4
The township spans 22.83 square miles and functions as, in the words of its own description, "a regional, economic, and employment center in its own right." 5 It is a place that would be unrecognizable to the Graham brothers who cleared forest along Brush Creek in 1796, or to the 959 residents who lived here in 1940. In eighty years, a quiet farming community became one of the fastest-growing areas in the Pittsburgh metropolitan region -- a transformation driven not by industry or natural resources, but by the simple geometry of highway interchanges.