The 100-acre Bendigo State Park is in a small valley surrounded with many picturesque hills. About 20 acres of the park is developed, half of which is a large shaded picnic area. The forest is predominantly northern hardwoods and includes beech, birch, cherry and maple. The East Branch of the Clarion River flows through the park. This beautiful stream was once polluted by abandoned mine drainage. It now provides excellent fishing and is stocked with trout by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

Bendigo State Park was named for William Thompson (1811-1880), an Irish tavern keeper who lived in England. A prizefighter on the side, his fighting career (1832-1851) was nearly perfect with only one loss. Because professional boxing in a ring was illegal at that time, he was arrested 28 times for violating the anti-fight law. When his opponent died during a heavyweight fight, Thompson fled to America to avoid criminal prosecution.

Thompson took the name Bendigo, a corruption of the Old Testament name Abed-nego, and moved to northwestern Pennsylvania. Working building railroads and as a Methodist evangelist, the very tall and strong Bendigo became the idol of his Italian co-workers. On the suggestion of the Italian railroad workers, Alfred Truman named a new mill town Bendigo. Truman also established a mill on the site of the current state park.

Just north of Bendigo State Park, the Belgian Count De Hamm founded a settlement of glass blowers. The settlers could not survive on just glass making and soon B.F. Hazelton built a large sawmill in the town and renamed the town Glen Hazel. The logging town thrived while the timber lasted, but now is mostly summer cottages and hunting camps.

Chartered in 1887, the Johnsonburg and Clermont Railroad linked the towns and mills of the area to haul the timber to the market. Visitors drive the old railroad trace when they drive the main park road. When the timber was exhausted, the railroad, sawmills and towns like Bendigo, slowly disappeared.

Bendigo State Park began in the 1920s as a community project of the nearby town of Johnsonburg. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) made many improvements to the park. Floods destroyed many of the WPA facilities in the 1940s, but the stonewall and dam on the East Branch of the Clarion River still remain.

The process began in August of 1948, and in April of 1949, the late State Senator George B. Stevenson introduced the bill that transferred the property to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Improvements were made to the park facilities. On August 15, 1959, Maurice K. Goddard, the former secretary of the Department of Forests and Waters, formally dedicated Bendigo State Park.