Beavers Bend State Park

The park takes its name from John T. Beavers, an intermarried Choctaw citizen who owned part of the land, and from the bend where the Mountain Fork River turns almost back on itself. Other parts were bought from the Choctaw Lumber Company, which Herman and Fred Dierks founded here from Broken Bow, Nebraska; the mill town they built took the name of home and was incorporated in 1911. Work on the park began in 1935, much of it by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and it was established in 1937.

The rock shows how the Ouachitas were made. They were thrust up when the North American and South American plates collided, and around the lake and river the beds stand tilted at about sixty degrees. In the 1960s the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Mountain Fork to make Broken Bow Lake, 14,220 acres with 180 miles of shoreline in the pines. Below the dam the river is stocked with trout year-round, with two catch-and-release trophy areas.

Timber still runs McCurtain County, and the Forest Heritage Center in the park tells its story with forestry tools, wood art and fourteen dioramas painted by Harry Rossoll, the artist who created Smokey Bear, and a bronze honoring Jim Burnett, the first Oklahoma forest firefighter killed on duty, in Wyoming in 2000. The David Boren trail runs 26 miles over ridges and creek bottoms, and the park has 47 cabins, a lodge on the lake and eight camping areas.