French Creek Valley was inhabited by a pre-Iroquoian culture dating to the Late Woodland Period from 500 AD to 1500 AD, with early settlers located downstream on the east bank. A 1938 archaeological dig on the Perry McFate Farm revealed three overlapping palisaded villages that existed over a 200-year period, exposing circular dwellings, stone artifacts, skeletal remains, and distinctive ceramic shell-tempered pottery labeled McFate Incised. Cochranton Borough was established on two Revolutionary Donation Land Grants of 200 acres each; John Adams purchased Plot 1292 in 1815 and Thomas Cochran purchased 1291 in 1824, then Cochran gave his plot to his son Joseph, who surveyed a town there in 1831, revised the plan in 1838 to incorporate the Adams property, named the village for his father, named its main street for Adams, and saw the borough incorporated on April 5, 1855. Early spring thaws periodically inundated the community, including the catastrophic flood of March 26, 1913, and massive ice jams on French Creek in 1959 and 1960 led the Army Corps of Engineers to establish upstream dams to control runoff. French Creek and Linde Sugar Creek were also vital in fighting major fires, including a $100,000 conflagration on September 19, 1928 that claimed half a block of wooden storefronts on the north side of Adams Street, the October 3, 1931 blaze that destroyed the community's original water-powered grist mill in the present Lions Community Park and led to formation of the Cochranton Volunteer Fire Department, and the January 30, 1962 fire that leveled nearly half a block on the south side of West Adam, with water from both creeks preventing the blaze from spreading across the street. The stream long attracted recreation, with generations fishing its banks and enjoying boating and swimming, and in recent wars French Creek became a corridor for visitors arriving in Cochranton by kayak. Cochranton's vacation appeal along the creek was strengthened in the 1930s when Pittsburgh contractor and outdoorsman Gus Holobar bought property upstream, built cottages, and rented and sold them to friends from his old Pittsburgh neighborhood, many of whom later joined the community as permanent residents. The creek was also a crossing place: the indigenous population forded it at a shallow-shale bottom riffle called Heiner's Riffle near the oxbow, early 19th-century horseback mail carriers used the same route, Porter and Cullom built the first 300-foot wooden covered bridge at the current crossing in 1825, high water destroyed that bridge on March 6, 1868, DeVore and Martin completed a replacement Burr Wood Truss bridge that October, an interim ferry begun on March 20 ended in June when the raft sank, the iconic covered bridge later became part of the Borough of Cochranton's official seal, a Parker Through Truss Bridge replaced the wood structure in 1930, and after 85 years the metal bridge gave way to the current 339-foot pre-stress concrete structure in November 2015.