Battle of Beaver Dams - National Historic Site

National Historic Site

Beaver Dams represents one of the earliest attempts to create a national historical park. In 1914, a convention of Ontario historical and patriotic groups resolved to ask the Department of the Interior "to develop a 40-acre site near Thorold as a national battlefield park commemorating the Battle of Beaver Dams." The move may have been inspired by the creation, earlier that year, of Fort Howe National Park in New Brunswick—the first site admitted to the national park system on the basis of its historical significance.

There were other galvanizing precedents. While there was no National Park Service in the United States until 1916, battlefields of the Civil War were designated and managed by the War Department: Chickamauga and Chattanooga (created 1890), Antietam (1890), Shiloh (1894), Gettysburg (1895), Vicksburg (1899), and Chalmette (1907). In Quebec, the Plains of Abraham were developed as a landscaped historical park, following creation of the National Battlefields Commission in 1908. Yet none of these sites were administered by a national park service.

Had Beaver Dams been made a national parkland in 1914, it would have been the first battlefield within a national park system in either country. Moreover, if legislation had adopted the convention's recommendation, it would have been the first "National Battlefield Park" in Canada or the United States. (Existing U.S. battlefields had been designated National Military Parks, with one National Battlefield Site.)

Although Beaver Dams was not made a national park, discussion of the proposal—along with the ad hoc creation of Fort Anne National Park in 1917—helped highlight the need for a coherent heritage policy, prompting the Interior minister to ask J.B. Harkin of the Parks Branch to develop one. This led to creation of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board in 1919—the genesis of national historic sites and historical parks for years to come. In 1921, soon after its formation, the Board designated the Battle of Beaver Dams a National Historic Site, one of its earliest selections.

A monument commemorating the battle was dedicated in 1923 and situated on the original site of the event (near the northeast corner of the intersection of Davis Road and Old Thorold Stone Road, approximately 1.4 kilometres (0.87 mi) southeast of present-day Thorold), where it was located for several decades. In 1976, this monument (as well as one marking the site where in 1876 during construction of the 3rd Welland Canal the remains of 16 U.S. soldiers from the battle were uncovered) was subsequently relocated several kilometers to the west when the Battle of Beaverdams Park was opened. The original site of the battlefield is currently unmarked.