Lucke compiles Beaver Creek history

A member of the Hill County Park Board presented some history of the 10,000-acre county park, from before it became a county park and much before it was an official park at all.

Robbie Lucke said he had dug through archives at the Havre-Hill County Library and compiled writing by the “father of the park,” Havre businessman L.K. Devlin, and Havre historian Earl J. Bronson.

“It’s a very old park history I found in bits and pieces at the library,” Lucke said Monday during the county park board meeting.

The use of the park as a recreation area stems to the establishment of Fort Assinniboine in 1878 and it being garrisoned in 1879. Soldiers and civilians at the fort used the creek for recreation, as did residents of Havre, with the permission of the fort.

When the fort was decommissioned in 1911, Devlin spearheaded Havre residents filing mining claims on the creek in an effort to preserve it as a recreation area. In 1916, in the same act of Congress creating Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation out of much of what had been the military reservation, land on either side of the creek was set as camping ground for Havre. The act also reserved land for resevoir purposes, which later was added to the park.

In the 1950s, the Hill County government bought the land and turned it into a county park.

Lucke said Monday that some of the history he compiled, which is available at the park office at Camp Kiwanis, shows problems people had using the area on either side of Beaver Creek south of where Havre was later established.

“They are the very same problems we are having today,” Lucke said, such as building bridges that were washed out by flooding.

The history says a group logging firewood for Fort Assinniboine when it first was established in 1878 at the mouth of Sucker Creek — a store and cabins later were set up there for the loggers — cleared beaver dams from the creek to float the firewood down to the fort. But eight or nine days later, the dams were back and the contractor decided to use wagons.

By the time the workers returned from Fort Assinniboine, the dams were back and stronger than ever.

The history details the Havre Kiwanis Club creating “Kiwanis Camp” on the park in 1930, and ends with the movement of the Civilian Conservation Corps Camp buildings, established on the park in 1933, to Camp Kiwanis. The materials from those buildings were used to construct boys and girls dormitories, a caretaker’s cottage and four smaller buildings.

Lucke said the next project on the history of the park will be digging out and compiling the more recent park history, since 1939, which he said is available in documents in the park office.