Chugwater

The name “Chugwater” has, historically, been traced back to an old Indian legend. 

As detailed in The Travelers Journal, 1994:

Sometime before the white man arrived in the area [now known as Chugwater], it was occupied by the Mandan tribe. As the story goes, the chieftain was, in theory, a mighty hunter. Unfortunately, a confrontation with a bull buffalo did not go in his favor, and he was badly injured. He ordered his son, who was called “Dreamer,” to lead the hunting party for him.

Dreamer was a thinker. He considered manual labor a necessary evil and avoided it whenever he could. He figured that the simplest way to kill buffalo was to just drive them off of one of the chalk cliffs in the area, and that is just what he ordered the hunters to do.

The word “chug” is said to describe the noise that the buffalo or the falling chalk made when it hit the ground or fell into the water under the bluff, depending on which version of the legend you wish to believe.

Indians began to call the area “water at the place where the buffalo chug.” Whites adopted the Indian name and called the area “Chug Springs.” Chugwater Creek was named after Chug Springs, and from that came the name of “Chugwater.”