This site long served as a popular picnic area for Wyocena residents, drawing about 1,000 people to an insurance company picnic as early as 1905. In 1948, lifetime Wyocena resident Gordon Spear sold the grounds to Columbia County and asked that it become a county park, a goal achieved in 1971 when the park was completed, dedicated, and named Wyona Park. The Spear-Allen Shelter House honors pioneer families important in creating the park. Local legend also held that a battle between Native Americans and the Army occurred here, based on several shallow pits within a fifty-foot circle and reported finds of a military buckle, buttons, and human bones, but the pits were more likely dug by looters searching Native American burial mounds that once stood in the park, since no military engagements with Indians were recorded in Columbia County.