The first decade of the 21st Century ends this year. Because of that, the Eagle is publishing a look back at major county events that occurred in the past 10 years. Each year will run in one day's edition. This is the first in this series.———Butler County celebrated 200 years on March 12, the day the county was founded. It culminated in an Aug. 26 parade on New Castle Road. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, a 1945 Butler High School graduate, served as the grand marshal.———Nitrates, an acidic salt, were discovered in the Connoquenessing Creek in the 1990s. Because it had been traced nationally to illnesses in children 6 months old and younger, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stepped in to clean it up.AK Steel's plant in Butler Township, 20 miles north of Zelienople, which is where the chemicals in the creek were coming from, said it had been given no restriction on the nitrates by the state EPA.At the end of the year, AK Steel was still operating under the same permit since no agreement had been worked out with the federal EPA.———Several school districts and three colleges undertook renovation and addition projects.Butler County Community College, with the help of the state, poured $3.5 million into campus renovations and construction of its Science, Technology and Cultural Center.Slippery Rock University spent $30 million to renovate its School of Physical Therapy Building, The ROCK Apartments, The Robert N. Aebersold Recreation Center, The Pearl K. Stoner Instructional Complex and three other campus buildings.Grove City College invested $35 million into two new buildings, a student activities center and a new academic building, as well as an expansion of The J. Howard Pew Fine Arts Center.The Butler, Freeport, Mars, Moniteau, Slippery Rock, Seneca Valley and South Butler school districts each opened the new millennium with renovation projects.After renovating nine of its other buildings in the 1990s, Butler approved $11 million to renovate the Emily Brittain and Broad street elementary schools and to maintain the intermediate high school.Freeport spent $12 million to renovate and expand Buffalo Elementary School to almost 100,000 square feet.Mars opened its primary center and added seven new classrooms to its middle school, while Moniteau spent $9.2 million to renovate and expand Dassa McKinney Elementary School so it could close Washington Elementary School.The Slippery Rock School District expanded and renovated its middle school and Har-Mer Elementary School at a cost of about $11 million.Seneca Valley spent $36.7 million to renovate its middle and intermediate schools, and South Butler spent $12.6 million to build what would become South Butler Primary School, replacing five existing neighborhood schools.———The Victory Road Business Park opened in Clinton Township on the site of the former USX sintering plant.The park now is nearly full.A new company, BeamOne, a medical sterilization business, announced in 2009 that it will move into a new building there next year and employee about 20 people.Development also began on Northpointe, just a few miles from the Butler County border in Slate Lick, Armstrong County.Both developments were intended as industrial parks, but Northpointe also houses a residential and recreational area.———According to the U.S. Census, Butler County's population grew from about 152,000 people in 1990 to about 172,000 people in 2000, an increase of more than 13 percent.The surge in populations in Seven Fields, Adams Township and Cranberry Township were the largest.The county now has an estimated population of more than 180,000.———Following the closure of the Montgomery Ward store in Butler Mall on New Castle Road, the retail space changed hands to an Ohio-based owner.Cranberry Commons opened on Route 228 in Cranberry Township, paving the way for development which continues today in the Route 228 corridor there.Clearview Mall expanded several of its anchor stores, J.C. Penney, Sears and Bon Ton. Boscov's and Ames also found new homes in the mall.Ames has since closed.Garfield's Restaurant and Pub and the Texas Roadhouse also received their liquor licenses and opened at the mall.———The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation made major steps to clear up traffic congestion in the Route 228 corridor in Cranberry Township.It completed a $10.4 million, seven-lane bridge carrying Route 228 over Interstate 79, began construction on the missing ramps connecting Route 228 to I-79, and bid out a $54.2 million, multiyear project to connect I-79 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.The Summit Township supervisors forged an agreement with PennDOT to make the intersection of routes 68, 38 and 422 safer by reconstructing the intersection and adding traffic signals.The two-year project was scheduled to be done from 2002 to 2004.