One month after Centre County was created, eight new counties were formed in the western part of the State by the Act of March 12, 1800. One of these was Beaver County, taken from Washington and Allegheny, and named for the Big Beaver River, or Creek, which was so called because of the great number of beavers once found on its banks and in its waters. Beaver County, in its modern aspect, has been celebrated by no less a writer than Rudyard Kipling, who asks his reader to "imagine a rolling, wooded English, landscape, with the softest of blue skies, dotted at three-mile intervals with fat little, quiet little villages, or aggressive little manufacturing towns."