THE Bear Den Creek was known early in the history of Dakota territory, or in fact before there was such a territory. The name was given the creek by the Indians and the Indian name was translated as "The place where the grizzly bear has his den." This was the name of a hill from which the creek gets its name. The guides of the Nicollet & Fremont Expedition in the summer of 1839 knew the creek by name.

The stage line established in 1880 to connect Columbia with Jamestown ran across this township, and had a relay station where the driver changed teams, and passengers could get meals, or stop over night. This relay station was located on a hill near where the highway crosses the creek, at the corners of Sections 4, 5, 8 and 9, and was a prominent land mark for the early years.  The station was designated the polling place for the three townships in the northeast corner of the county in 1884.

Mr. Mons Nelson met in Fargo a friendly Swede who had been out in the Bear Creek region and from his description Mr. Nelson filed on a piece of land for a preemption southeast of where Oakes is now located. Mr. Brown who was located southwest of Oakes, and Mr. Nelson came out to his land that he had never seen before. They came out by stage through Jamestown to the relay station then down to their claims, and proceeded to build two shanties, mostly of sod construction. They had to go to Lisbon for their lumber and finished their dwelling by putting 2 by 4's across on the sod walls, putting on some strips of board and thatching the roof with slough grass. They changed work and lived together that first summer, getting their mail from the relay station.

Brown's horses were old and one of them died so he had to go to Fargo to get a new team. He bought a yoke of oxen and drove overland so was away from home about two weeks. The supplies were low when he left and Nelson had to live on pancakes and molasses. The coffee was gone but he kept on boiling the grounds and extracting what he could from them.  Meat was unknown and had he had a dollar to go on he would have chucked the whole thing. When he could stand it no longer he went to the Bear Creek stage station and got a meal of salt pork and biscuits, a great relief from his constant fare.  There was no garden that first year, but they got quite a few game birds not being troubled much about the game laws.

Mrs. Nelson came out on October 29^th, 1882, the first white woman to make her home in the east end of the county. She came by stage from Jamestown to Bear Creek Station where Mr. Nelson met her. She did not stay long on the preemption before she was persuaded to go to Grand Rapids to help in the hotel there. After Christmas Mr. Nelson went to Grand Rapids and worked for the hotel people as driver of their dray line.  About the first of April the Nelsons went back to their preemption to complete their residence and prove up. They did this in order to take a homestead, which they took in the southwest of Section 4, on the east side of the creek opposite the stage station. They bought $123.00 worth of lumber and put up a real frame house, 12 by 16, papered inside and walled up with sod on the outside. They had to build a sod barn and dig a well. All that spring when he was not making his own improvements he was working out for Benjamine at the relay station, working until June, when he went to breaking on his own place. He managed to get a wagon for $29.00 so had his vehicle before he had his motive power. He found a yoke of oxen for $126.00 but as he had only $100.00 he had to give his note, surprised that it would be accepted. His money was gone as he had already bought a cow, three pigs which had cost him $10.00 a piece, and a hen and nine chickens for $2.75. By getting a job of breaking he earned enough to pay his note and buy his groceries.

The Nelsons did their trading at Verona, and were able to get fish from a big spring in the creek and put in a pleasant winter. He had a crop the next year, and with good credit he got well established, and never went into the grain business very heavily, but has kept cattle, hogs and chickens. When the city of Oakes was started they had a trading place there. He sold his homestead in 1910 and moved into Oakes, as he had been afflicted for some time with rheumatism and had to let his farm go.

In 1884 Herman Kenkel (or Kinkle as it is sometimes given) came into the Bear Creek country and started a big farm. The larger part of Kenkel's holdings were over in the township north, but as he needed a large number of men it was quite the practice of the men around Bear Creek to work for him in the seasons of seeding and harvest. In May of 1885 Mr. Kenkel had a serious accident from the accidental discharge of a shotgun which hit him in the arm and the wound was several months in healing. In 1888 he had 1600 acres in crop, but was unfortunate in having his granary and machine shed burned with contents, suffering a loss of $1300.00.

Anton Christianson came up to Fargo in 1882 with Mons Nelson, his brother-in-law but did not take land at that time. Letters between him and Mr. Nelson were exchanged in the winter of 1882-83, so in June of 1883, Mr. Christianson came out to Dakota from his home at Litchfield, driving a team and wagon loaded with household goods, supplies and feed. They were fourteen days on the road and much of the time Mrs. Christianson had to walk to relieve the team of all they could of the load. The boy Arthur was only two weeks old when they started on the journey. He filed a pre-emption of the northwest of Section 9, and later took a homestead on the northwest of 3. When he started from Minnesota he had seven dollars in money and his team was mortgaged for sixty dollars. The first winter the Nelsons and Christianson's lived in the Nelson sod house, but the next spring Christianson built a sod house on his pre-emption, and put up some fairly substantial buildings of sod. He and Nelson worked much in partnership, and he worked for Kinkel to earn some money. Both Mr. and Mrs.  Christianson secured a steady job with Herman Kenkel and this gave an opportunity for another man to contest their homestead and they lost it.

They received $300.00 for the first year's work at Kenkel's and an increase of $100.00 a year for the next two years. Then they farmed their pre-emption for a while and bought one of Kenkel's farms. Later they sold their land holdings and got the funds with which they bought a farm from the railroad land grant, on which they built up a good home. He says he had to pay as high as 45 percent for one loan he had to make and fifteen percent on another loan.

Mr. George Dill and L. B. Babcock came up to the new country from western New York state, and while they located in Sargent County their places were just across the line and they had much in common with the early settlers of Bear Creek. Mr. Dill brought his family out in April, 1884, and put in some land to crop without very much return. The greatest hardship was water. He put down thirty holes on his place trying to get water and then had to move his buildings to another location to be near water, and this was alkaline. The first summer Mrs. Dill taught the neighbors' children and her own to get them started, but the next summer a school house was built and they had a regular school with Frank Graham as teacher. They started Sunday School the first thing when they got there and three families united, Fifers, Babcocks and Dills. They had these meetings in the homes and Mr. Witham from near Port Emma came over every two weeks and preached for them. A neighbor, Mrs. Short brought over her little melodian, which added much to the pleasure of the services.

In the spring of 1885, Thomas Singleton and his son, W. R. Singleton, moved out to a relinquishment they had bought on the southwest of Section 2 of Bear Creek. They drove across from Fargo and brought out some lumber from Lisbon and put up a claim shanty, and so were prepared for the family when they came later. They drove out fifty head of cattle taking six days for the trip. During the summer of 1886 Mr. Singleton secured a contract for grading on the Northwestern near Ludden and worked six teams at that job. Later he got another contract on the Soo and worked until it froze up. There were two younger boys who took care of the stock and they did some farming.  They had a winter school, the house being on wheels and movable so those who had time to go had the opportunity, but W. R. was fourteen years old and handled teams on the grading crew doing a man's work so did not get to school much at that time. The Singletons kept to the cattle business and have developed the Rosemay herd which now numbers 110 head of fine Shorthorn cattle. In 1898 W. R. took over the farm from his father and started in business for himself. In 1903 he took over the big Kinkle farms which were a few miles farther west. Kinkle was a distant relative and W. R. Singleton became the administrator of the estate.   He served as Sheriff of Dickey County from 1925 to 1929.

John Nelson worked on the grading crews of the Northern Pacific west of Mandan and also on the Milwaukee east of Aberdeen, and in 1883 went out into Clement Township and squatted, first on the northwest of 33 and later on Section 4 in Hudson Township. In 1902 he came up to Bear Creek and bought a home on the site of the old stage station, the northeast of Section 8, where Wm. Mills had lived. Here the family lived for twenty years and then moved into Oakes.

When this township was organized it was a part of the town of Climax which included Clement Township also. For a number of years these two townships worked together on schools and government, but later the part east of the James River became a separate school district known as Climax and the township was named Bear Creek. Three railroads built into the township; the Northwestern from the south, the Soo from the east and the Northern Pacific from the north. Where the Northwestern stopped the city of Oakes was established, and the Soo and Northern Pacific also contributed to the building of that city. And from that time the new city was the center of interest in Bear Creek. The Northern Pacific built its Wadena line from Milnor to Oakes in 1901, and the flag stop of Janet was later put in on Section 11.

Several families of the pioneers are still left in the township and in the city of Oakes. One of the earliest pioneers, John A. Brown, a single man, was murdered at his home two miles southwest of Oakes on June 26^th, 1896. Rings belonging to Mr. Brown were found in possession of two boys 17 years old who had been at Brown's for some time. With these as a clue the boys were tried in district court at Ellendale and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Alx. Alexanderson built his river boat, the "Wonderland" on Bear Creek in 1910, and carried on the last experiment of boating on the James.  Other means of transportation were already becoming more popular and in 1924 State Highways Nos. 1 and 11 were graded through Bear Creek Township, so that the people have easy access to their own city and to other parts of the highway system of the state.

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