The Delaware and Shawnee Indians used this general region of the Alleghenies as hunting grounds. However, the Delaware Indians were primarily agrarian, so they tended to settle in low-lying areas with suitable soils for growing crops. The Native Americans would have traveled through and hunted in parts of the Shade Creek watershed, but their visits likely would have been transitory, not permanent. However, there has never been a comprehensive survey of potential prehistoric archeological sites in the region, so potential prehistoric sites are not known.

The following listing of historical features in the Shade Creek watershed has been extracted from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, by Scott C. Brown, Frances C. Robb and Elaine Will, published by America’s Industrial Heritage Project and the National Park Service, 1994.

• Border Dam, constructed circa 1900, is built of timber cribbing and is 9 feet high. The dam was built in part because the intakes from the Stonycreek River at Johnstown were increasingly polluted from mine drainage, and in part because of the growing need for water.

• Stony Creek Viaduct of the Pennsylvania Railroad, constructed in 1901 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, is a 540-foot, single-track, deck plate-girder structure resting on five steel towers. The bridge is 0.25 miles east of Seanor.

• Shade Furnace was built in 1807. Today, only the stone foundations and the ore pit mines and piles of ore remain. The Historical & Genealogical Society of Somerset County own the site, located near the Village of Miller Run.
  
• Cairnbrook National Historic District, with 140 contributing resources, including utilitarian industrial buildings, six types of vernacular residential dwellings, and a few buildings of the Prairie School of architecture was officially designated in 1994

• Gahagen, a village in Shade Township, was a company town for Gahagen Coal Company, and end of the line for the Shade Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The town features 20 two-story, double houses with full-width, one-story porches.

• Gahagen Coal Company also built Rockingham, another Shade Township Village. The houses are two-story and side-gabled with full-front porches.

• Reitz, Reitz No. 2, Reitz No. 3, Reitz No. 4 and Reitz No. 5 are all small coal-mining villages constructed by Reitz Coal Company. All contain houses and mine-related structures.

• The Foust Mill, constructed in 1812, remains in the village of Seanor in Paint Township.

• The Daley Family Cemetery, developed by early settlers, is maintained by the Pennsylvania Game Commission on State Game Lands 228.

A Profile of Somerset County, published by the Somerset County Planning Commission in July 1992, also notes that early settlement structures in Shade Township include at least three log houses and the stone Statler House dating from 1834. In addition, Central City Borough is highlighted in literature promoting historic areas within Somerset County due to the its many styles and sizes of former coal company-owned housing and some old coal company buildings.
At least two churches in the watershed have historical significance; Shade Church, erected in 1822-23, and a summer vacation home of lumber baron E.V. Babcock remains in the village of Ashtola, according to A Guidebook to Historic Western Pennsylvania.