Beaver Lake State Park (North Dakota)
park in North Dakota, USA

Beaver Lake State Park is a public recreation area located in Logan County, North Dakota, about equidistant from Napoleon and Wishek. The state park occupies 273 acres (110 ha) of land on the western shore of 968-acre (392 ha) Beaver Lake and offers hiking, boating, swimming, fishing, cabins, and campground.
History
The park began through the encouragement of local residents who met in 1929 at Shepard’s Pavilion, which is located just south of the eventual park boundary, to promote creation of a state park honoring the early settlers who lived on the shores of Beaver Lake. Dedication ceremonies took place in July 1932. In 1933, the lake's water level was raised with the damming of Beaver Creek. Laborers with the Works Progress Administration worked in the park in 1935 and 1936, creating roads, paths, an earthen dock, and picnic area. Their work is memorialized with a stone monument in the park.
The public source identifies “Beaver Lake State Park (North Dakota)” as park in North Dakota, USA. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Beaver, Lake and State.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Beaver Lake State Park (North Dakota)”, the useful work is to connect “park in North Dakota, USA” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q813486. The Library of Congress control number is sh2009009342. Authority coordinates are 46.403, -99.620. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929, 1932, 1933 and 1935.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Beaver Lake State Park (North Dakota) primary sources, Beaver Lake State Park (North Dakota) archive and Beaver research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Beaver Lake State Park (North Dakota)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.