Monaca (/mɪˈnækə/ mi-NAK-ə) is a borough in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, along the Ohio River.

First incorporated in 1840 as Phillipsburg as the home of the New Philadelphia Society, its name was changed to Monaca in honor of the Oneida leader Monacatootha.

Helvidi, who may have been the first white settler in Monaca, bought the large "Appetite" tract and raised sheep on it, but his venture was unsuccessful.

In 1822, the beginnings of a town appeared when Stephen Phillips and John Graham purchased the property and established their "extensive boat yards" on the Ohio River there.

[6] Phillips and Graham built numerous steamboats, including the William Penn, which carried the Harmonites from their second settlement in New Harmony, Indiana, to Beaver County and their third and final home at Economy.

In 1832, Phillips and Graham sold the entire tract of land to seceders from the Harmony Society at Economy, and moved their boatyards to what is now Freedom.

Perhaps because of ongoing litigation and other financial problems, Müller's group sold its communal land in Pennsylvania in 1833.

But many stayed in Monaca, and not long after Müller and his followers left, a new religious speaker, William Keil, showed up in the area in the early 1840s.

Keil was able to attract some followers who were former Harmony Society/New Philadelphia Society members, and his group eventually moved away and settled the communal town of Bethel, Missouri, in 1844, and Aurora, Oregon, in 1856.

The first burgess was Frederick Charles Speyerer, and the first council Edward Acker, Jacob Schaffer, Henry Jung, George Forstner, and Adam Schule.

The Home, according to one of the students, consisted of a "dormitory, dining room, schoolhouse, bathhouse, woodshed, carpenter shop and a two-acre playground."

There is a historical marker near the point where Fourth Street meets Route 18 that reads: "Water Cure Sanatorium founded 1848 by Dr. Edward Acker.

In 1892, the borough's name was changed from Phillipsburg to Monaca in honor of the Native American Indian Monacatootha[4] (also known as Scarouady).

Monacatootha ("Great Arrow") was an Oneida warrior chief and a representative of the Iroquois Confederacy with the authority to supervise affairs among the Delawares and Shawnees in that area.

In the borough's history, manufacturers made tons of enameled porcelain ware, glass, tile, tubing, drawn steel and wire.

In 2003, Monaca was the epicenter of one of the most widespread hepatitis A outbreaks in the United States, which afflicted at least 640 people and killed four in northeastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania.

[8] In March 2012, Royal Dutch Shell announced its intention to study and build a multi-billion-dollar ethane cracker complex near Monaca to produce ethylene from abundant Marcellus shale natural gas in the area.