The 150-acre (0.61 km2) park is located on the east bank of the Oldman River just below Downtown Lethbridge. It is bordered by Whoop-Up Drive to the south and Highway 3 to the north.
The area that would later become the park was known as Company Bottom, due to its proximity to the former hamlet of Coalbanks, which was a company town that featured a brewery, cemetery, a company store, cabins, and a well.[2] The park is named after the Battle of the Belly River which happened on 24 October 1870 between the Blackfoot and the Cree at a site on the Oldman River southwest of Lethbridge. A formal peace treaty between the two nations was reached in 1871. Due to repeated floods throughout the 20th century (14 in total), people stopped living in the river valley and moved to the area above the valley, where most of Lethbridge is located today.[2] The park was created in the 1960s, a decade after the last houses were moved from the river valley. In 1966, the Kinsmen Club built a replica of Fort Whoop-Up in Indian Battle Park,[2] the original fort was actually located at the confluence of Oldman and St Mary Rivers south of the city. The Helen Schuler Nature Centre was opened in 1982. In 2005, a city council bid to rename the park Valley Of Peace (to remove negative references to First Nations) was rejected.
