Most of the township is part of the glacial moraine that formed the southeast shore of prehistoric Lake Agassiz.

The rest had migrated directly from Scandinavia or from the immediately adjoining states in the Upper Midwest.

Indian artifacts, including grinding rocks, were excavated near Badger Creek in the SW 1/4 of Section 8 in the mid-1960s, indicating a periodic visitation pattern but no permanent residency.

Bison roamed over Badger Township into the 1870s, and were actively pursued by Indians and Metis from the Pembina Settlements.

Several bison skulls and skeletal remains thought to be over 2000 years old, as well as an Indian grinding rock, were unearthed in a peat bog by the Nikolayson family in Section 33 in the 1960s, and now are on display in the University of Minnesota in nearby Crookston.

Prior to that time, the territory now included in Badger Township was within the watershed of the Red River Valley and hence technically a part of Rupert's Land and Assiniboia before becoming part of British Canada as a result of the boundary settlement in the Treaty of 1818, a which fixed the international border at the 49th parallel north from the Northwest Angle of Lake of the Woods westward to the Rocky Mountains.

(Since Red River ox cart trains used in trading expeditions between Pembina and St. Paul, Minnesota included many family members and hunters in addition to the oxcart drivers, they tended to spread out across the prairie except at key fords and crossings.

It is likely that people in the trains entered what is now Badger Township many times before the extension of the railroad to Fargo, North Dakota put the Red River ox carts out of business in the early 1860s.

Thereafter, while there is no specific record of its occupation prior to 1880, the history of the township is essentially indistinguishable from areas to the west, north and east in Northwest Minnesota).

Badger Township was traversed by trappers and traders, including Indians, Métis and other half-breed people as well as white men incidental to the fur trade between 1790 and 1870.

In 1797, the North West Company established a fur trading post approximately 15 miles northwest of Badger Township at the confluence of the Red Lake River and the Clearwater River, near the current site of Red Lake Falls.

After Minnesota statehood, although the area remained unsurveyed and closed to settlement, some squatters may have encroached into the territory of Badger Township as permanent settlers before 1880.

A general store and railroad depot were in operation in Cisco until the late 1940s, and a few other home-operated family businesses may have had a fleeting existence, but none have endured.

A large grain terminal, including a mile-long circular siding capable of holding a 110-car freight train, is now operating in Section 32 of Badger Township on the east side of along County Road 18, south of Highway 2 and the Great Northern Railway (BNSF).

[5] There is no incorporated or unincorporated community of any size within Badger Township, although the former places known as Sletten and Cisco were located within its territory.