The park offers year-round recreation including camping, boating, hunting, fishing, swimming, picnicking, and hiking.

[3] The land in and around Buck Creek State Park was inhabited by various Indian tribes prior to settlement by American pioneers.

[3] Clark County was safely opened to settlement by whites following the Battle of Fallen Timbers and resulting Treaty of Greenville when the Wyandot, Lenape, Shawnee, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Miami, Wea, Kickapoo and Kaskaskia tribes surrendered their claims to the land in what would become Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Simon Kenton led a group of six Kentucky families into the area of Buck Creek and the Mad River.

Markets to the east and west were opened to the Buck Creek State Park area in 1840 with the completion of the National Road, now U.S. Route 40.

[5] The Crabill Homestead, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is on the west shore of the reservoir within Buck Creek State Park.

Slated for demolition with the construction of the dam, it was acquired by the Clark County Historical Society which restored the property and opened it to public.

[7] Buck Creek State Park is located in an area of moraines, which are low hills that were built as the glaciers receded over 12,000 years ago.

[3] The bogs and fens are home to a variety of rare and unusual plant species including horned bladderwort and round-leaved sundew.

Buck Creek State Park is also home to many migrating waterfowl species and some rare songbirds including, Henslow's sparrows, dickcissels, and bobolinks.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Ohio Department of Natural Resources have been able to use seeds from these patches to restore the prairie to some of the land at Buck Creek State Park.

Non-native and invasive plant species are managed by hand pulling, cutting, mowing, burning and spraying projects.