Bad Rock Canyon was a popular stopping place where tourists paused from the road, fished in the Flathead River, enjoyed the narrow canyon’s scenery, and drew water from a natural spring that also helped cool overheated radiators in the early days of automobiles. In 1954, James and Hazel Simpson donated this site to the Montana Highway Department on the condition that it be named Berne Roadside Park for Hazel’s uncles, Billy and Mike Berne. The brothers came to the upper Flathead area in 1889 from Butte, where they had worked as miners, and although they arrived hoping to speculate on coal deposits in the North Fork of the Flathead River country, they found greater opportunity with the coming of the Great Northern Railway. They made brick for many of the new buildings in recently platted Columbia Falls. In 1906, Billy bought a small farm from Frieda Herrig at the mouth of Bad Rock Canyon and spent the rest of his life farming and promoting the area for tourism, while Mike spent most of his life farming west of Columbia Falls. The Montana Highway Department developed Berne Roadside Park in 1956 as one of the state’s first rest areas.