The word 'Piqua' is believed to be derived from a Shawnee language phrase: Othath-He-Waugh-Pe-Qua, translated as "He has risen from the ashes," related to a legend of the people.

In 1752 Charles de Langlade, an Odawa war chief of partial French Canadian descent, attacked the fort.

He led more than 240 Odawa and Ojibwe warriors allied with French forces against the British and the Miami village in the Battle of Pickawillany.

That year, an expedition by Gen. George Rogers Clark culminated in the Battle of Piqua, after which the town and surrounding fields were burned.

As Gen. Anthony Wayne's Legion was returning to Greenville via Loramie's trading post and Piqua at the termination of their Indian Country campaign in fall 1794, Wayne wrote a letter to Henry Knox dated October 17, 1794, in which he recommended that forts be built at those two locations as waystations along the Miami River.

By 1795, most of Ohio's Shawnee had moved to Missouri and those that remained migrated north to the Auglaize - the southwestern Indian towns were no more.

The first European settlers arrived in 1798, after the signing of the Treaty of Greenville ending the Northwest Indian War and opening much of Ohio to settlement.

In 1807 the village, consisting of seven houses, was surveyed by Armstrong Brandon, a soldier under Gen. Anthony Wayne, and named Washington.

[5] Virginia planter John Randolph of Roanoke, who served as a U.S. representative and senator, arranged for the emancipation of his nearly 400 slaves in his will of 1833.

[6] He also provided money for his executor to relocate the freedmen to the free state of Ohio, and to buy land and supplies to help them establish a settlement.

[8][9] These are located on the northeast side of the Great Miami River; they may be accessed by nearby North County Road 25-A.

The heaviest rainfall occurred on March 25 with anywhere from 2” in the southeast corner of Ohio to 5” in the area between Piqua and Troy.

All together, the total amount of precipitation for this five day period was recorded from 5” in the southeast of Ohio to 11” in the swatch between Piqua and Troy.

[11] The flood waters came with such speed and force as to move homes off their foundations, depositing untold amounts of mud in others and claiming forty-nine lives in Piqua and neighboring Rossville alone.

Public utilities (gas, sewer and water) were hampered to provide services, due to mud clogging up the pipes.

The estimated property damage/loss in Piqua reached $1,000,000 ($26.2M in present-day dollars), excluding public utilities and farm losses.

The Atomic Energy Commission bought out the contract with the City of Piqua in order to terminate the operations early, citing higher-priority needs for manpower and funding, lack of programmatic interest, and technical problems.

During the rebuilding of the mill, French included a machine he had invented and patented in 1898, a "cake trimmer", and purchased the most modern equipment then available.

Today, the company has customers in over 80 countries, still serving the vegetable oil extraction market (to press such seeds as soybeans, cottonseed, rapeseed, canola, and many others).

In later years it attracted adventurous types from surrounding towns, and Piqua residents discouraged their children from attending.

Acquired by Wayne Corporation of Richmond, Indiana, which manufactured school buses, it operated as the Miller-Meteor division.

The Piqua Coca-Cola Bottling Company, owned by the Lange family, was located on the downtown square at the northeast corner of Main and High streets.

The increased demand for Coke products in two-liter plastic bottles and cans made the aging local plant obsolete; it was closed down and razed by the end of the decade.

The Val Decker Packing Company, which operated until 1981, was a local producer of hams, hot dogs, and other meats and lard under the tagline "Piquality."

The building which housed the meat packing plant was renovated in 1987 for office use by the Piqua Board of Education and several small businesses.

Piqua's industrial past produced a prosperity reflected in residential areas near downtown, which contain numerous large mansions and homes.

Miami Valley Crossing (formerly Piqua East Mall, opened in 1970) was redesigned and updated in the late 1990s as a plaza with several anchor stores.

The building's street-level commercial spaces were occupied by a variety of businesses over the years, including a barbershop, grocer, bank, the local telephone company business office, Western Union, a combination bus station and taxi office with a very popular soda fountain and lunch counter, and others.

In addition, the building is the location of The Scottish Thistle, a full-scale restaurant and bar, complete with a patio for live entertainment.

Piqua has two Main Streets, one being north and southbound along Miami County Road 25-A (the former U.S. Route 25, also known as the Dixie Highway); the other running east through Shawnee.