A Bear or a Bull?

1902: In 1902, the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper re-published a rather confusing story from the San Jose Mercury. A San Jose butcher, Charles Thomspon, hung a side of meat in his shop and to it attached a sign saying “Bear.” To Charles Wampach he admitted that the bear had been caught in the Big Basin by Andrew P. Hill.

Soon half a dozen butchers from around town gathered at the shop to admire the “fine specimen.” Then Thompson retracted his story, saying no it is not a bear but a calf. The butchers didn’t buy the story - they knew the difference between bear and beef! So Wampach sought out Hill for clarification.

Hill confirmed the story, and stated that the bear had "come at me" while he was photographing in the Big Basin and that he and John Richards, who was accompanying him, killed the bear together.

The story implies that Thompson, the butcher, was deliberately staging a joke and that Hill somehow guessed this and followed along with the pretense.

Perhaps it would not have been prudent to be advertising the fact that there were bears in the Big Basin at the same time as one was advocating it as a State Park. Big Basin became a State Park in 1902, second only to Yosemite which had by then become a National Park. Hill was the highly influential, official artist of the Sempervirens Club, the club that was so actively working to petition for the establishment of the park.

Later, Hill ran a photography and art studio in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. When his health was failing in 1922, he advertised for someone to assist him. Forest Roy Fulmer applied for the position.

He worked closely with Hill over the next few months until Hill’s death. Fulmer took over the studio. One of the multitudes of postcards published by Fulmer’s Studio depicts a photograph taken by Hill of the Grandmother Tree. On the back it states, “This tree is hollow at the base. A bear was killed in this tree about 1900.”