The Beaver Creek oil and gas field was discovered in 1938 with completion as a gas well of the Johnson No. 1 from the Lakota sand. The well was shut in until 1944, after which date eight additional gas wells were drilled, producing gas from five Frontier sands, the Muddy, and Lakota sand. Oil was discovered on a test to the Tensleep sand in 1948, at a depth of 10,450 feet. No tests have been drilled to the upper Mississippian or Madison formations, but oil production is believed possible in these deeper beds.

Total closure has not yet been established. Proved productive closure is approximately 1,200 feet.

The Beaver Creek anticline is a gentle fold in the Wind River beds at the surface, the axis trending north-south and having about 100 feet of structural closure. Subsurface data indicate more sharply folded beds from the Cretaceous through the Triassic, with the structural axis changing direction to trend slightly northwest-southeast.

Below the Triassic, the structure is less pronounced, indicating differential movement through the stratigraphic column from compression stresses. Subsurface and surface data indicate that Beaver Creek and Riverton dome, on the northwest, are on the same structural axis.

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