A brief retelling of Beaver Creek's long history

Although it was created in its present form in the 1950s, Hill County's Beaver Creek Park has been providing recreation to people in the area long before there was a county or a city in the area.

Soldiers and civilians at Fort Assinniboine used the area for camping and picnics, and once people settled in Cypress just west of where Havre now is, and in Havre itself, they could request passes from the fort to recreate there as well.

When the fort was decommissioned in 1911 and the fort reservation turned over to the Department of the Interior, some of the town fathers in Havre filed mining claims on the creek, using it as a recreation area.

Then, when most of the land from the fort reservation was used to create Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation in 1916, about 10,000 acres were given to Havre to use as a recreation area and for reservoir water storage.

According to "Grits, Guts and Gusto," the people of the area had become concerned that that city might lose the use of the recreation area, and, after many years of effort, the Hill County Commission paid $27,760.44 for a patent on 9,253.48 acres in Beaver Creek Park.

In 1952, the county paid $2,670 for the 920 acres patented to Havre for reservoir purposes, and later bought a small amount of land from private landowners as well as buying right-of-way access for the state-owned Bear Paw Lake.