Bears Like Bacon

1889, Official Map of Santa Cruz County,
A. J. [Andrew Jackson] Hatch

1877: C. C. [Charles Campbell] Rodgers, founder of the Mountain Echo newspaper published in Boulder Creek, had an encounter with a mother grizzly and her two cubs. Rodgers was living on his homestead at the source of Boulder Creek at Bull’s Spring (also known as Bull Springs). Bull’s Spring is close to Highway 236 on the edge of Big Basin State Park and on the Skyline-to-the-Sea trail.

Headwaters of Boulder Creek at Bull's Spring, with
a small concrete dam through which the creek flows.

He had not yet built his cabin on the land and so slept on the ground under the stars. Around sunrise one morning he awoke to find a large female grizzly eating his discarded bacon rinds just a few feet from the end of his bed, with two cubs a little further away. Rodgers and the bear looked at each other for a brief time - that seemed like an eternity to the former. He then sprung to his feet and without stopping to dress he “clasped the nearest tan-oak in a loving embrace” and made a desperate attempt to climb it. Fortunately, for Rodgers, the bear gave a disgruntled growl and sidled slowly off into the nearby brush.

The area has since been logged.

That very same day Rodgers constructed a scaffold, in a “bunch of redwoods” well up from the ground, and used it to sleep on until he had completed his cabin. He bored holes in a redwood into which he drove wooden pins so as to make a ladder up which he could climb to the scaffold high in the tree.

In October the same year, C. C. Rodgers had yet another encounter. The Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel reported:

“On the head of Boulder Creek, last week, C. C. Rodgers, while ascending a trail, found himself in the rear of a couple of grizzly cubs. They hurried along, a few feet apart, the hunter getting his Henry rifle in order to give them a salute. Hearing the pattering of feet behind him, he turned his head and beheld mother bruin, open mouthed, long-haired and shaggy, and apparently as large as an elephant. Thinking that there might be something in the bushes that he wanted he turned aside, breaking one side of his bridle in doing so. Held by one rein around and around swung his terrified animal, and the grizzly kings of the forest, together and satisfied that neither was hurt, moved off at their leisure, apparently indifferent to the presence of the man with the broken bridle.”

Gatling Gun versus a Bear!

Boulder Blast, October 19, 1895

1899:  In December 1899, butcher William (Billy) H. Dool of Boulder Creek sent a 300 pound black bear to the Popular Meat Market in Santa Cruz. The bear had been shot by Henry L. Middleton in the Big Basin.

Henry Middleton had acquired a Gatling gun and wanting to “experiment” with it took it to a place near his lumber mill in the Big Basin. The gun, a machine gun that consists of multiple barrels revolving around a central axis and is capable of being fired at a rapid rate, had been “captured” from the Filipinos.

The Gatling Gun,
for Service Ashore & Afloat,
William B. Franklin, 1874

(The Philippine-American War ran from Feb 1899 to Jul 1902. Middleton had just been awarded a contract by the US government to supply troops at Manila with 3000 tons of hay.)

He fired the gun and then saw a large bear approaching. Middleton had long wanted to kill a bear and saw this as his opportunity.

The bear came running toward the gun, Middleton fired.

"Bruin saw he had no business with the Mayor of Boulder Creek, and decided that the Big Basin was too small to hold both. As the bear turned to run another shot was fired with fatal effect."

Middleton, with the assistance of several men, brought the bear to Dool's Meat Market in Boulder Creek.

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.”

Rancho Punta del Año Nuevo

Isaac Chapman Steel,
The History of San Mateo County, California,
1883, B. F. Alley Publisher

1867: Once Rancho Punta del Año Nuevo, of which a part became the Isaac Steele Dairy Ranch, abounded with grizzlies. The Ranch, now part of Año Nuevo State Park, is located 21 miles north of Santa Cruz and is adjacent to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. An 1867 encounter with a grizzly above the garden at Isaac Steel’s home, Green Oaks, was chronicled in À La California by Col. Albert S. Evans, 1873: 

"Mr. Steele pointed out where a fearful scene was enacted just above his garden in 1867. An old she-bear came down with her two cubs in the day-time and seized a hog. Two men employed on the ranch, both Portuguese, started to rescue the hog. One had a gun, the other only a garden mattock. They found her by the fence eating the hog, and yelled at her to drive her away. She accepted the challenge, and with a growl dashed over the fence and after them. The man with the gun pointed it full-cocked at her head, but, as he afterward admitted, when he felt her hot breath in his face, became demoralized, dropped the weapon and jumped over the fence. His companion

Included in the National Register Nomination Form, 1976
Courtesy San Mateo County Historical Association

followed his example, and they jumped back and forth for some minutes with the enraged brute in close pursuit. At length the man who had the mattock started to run across the field toward the house; but the bear caught him, threw him down, bit him through the thigh, and then started after the other assailant. Had the wounded man feigned death he would have been saved; but not understanding grizzly fighting, he jumped up and began shouting for help. At this she turned upon him more infuriated than ever, and, seizing him by the side, literally tore him in pieces, killing him instantly. The other man escaped. The next morning the bear, bear-like, returned to finish the hog, and was shot by a party lying in wait for her."

The True Story of William Waddell

1875: On Friday October 1, William Waddell and John Bradley went deer hunting in the gulches behind Waddell's mill. After crossing Steele Gulch they parted, Waddell to the right, Bradley to the left. Waddell found the remains of a deer that he thought had been taken by a mountain lion. His dog caught a scent which it followed up a ravine. The dog began barking then moments later it came bounding towards Waddell pursued by a grizzly.

The bear attacked Waddell in the thigh. The dog immediately attacked the bear which let go of Waddell to again pursue the dog. The two disappeared in the distance. Waddell fired his gun to alert Bradley to his crippled situation. Bradley found Waddell with his thigh badly lacerated and bruised. 

Dr. Charles L. Anderson

Waddell was taken home by horse and treated by Dr. Charles Anderson who later stated that his wounds “were severe but under ordinary circumstances would not be considered serious.”

Waddell died six days later of suspected Pyaemia, a form of infection that was almost always fatal before the introduction of antibiotics in the 1930s. 

Site of William Waddell's Mill in Big Basin State Park

William Waddell, who came to California in the early 1850s, was a lumberman who owned and operated a sawmill. He is the namesake of Waddell Beach and Waddell Creek in Rancho Del Oso (Bear Ranch) which is now part of Big Basin State Park.

Grizzly in Big Basin - Too Frightened to Stay

1890: In May 1890, Jacob “Hans” Mandel, a cook at a sawmill near Boulder Creek, and two friends had an encounter with a bear while on a hunting trip in the Big Basin. As the men rested in the evening after the day's work they heard a noise in the brush. On looking around they spotted a huge grizzly bear in the distance. The grizzly saw them and moved towards them "his eyes gleaming like two electric lights."

The men ran for a mile with the grizzly gaining on their heels. They reached a tall climbable tree and took refuge in it just as the grizzly caught up. Unable to reach the men, the grizzly just remained at its base for several hours. Afraid to move, the men stayed in the tree all night on their "uncomfortable perches." In the morning they realized the bear had departed, so they climbed down the tree and "made haste to reach Boulder."

The experience was too much for Hans who promptly resigned as cook to return to the safety of Santa Cruz. This was a great loss to the sawmill crew as Hans was famed for his corn beef hash which was considered "a rare delicacy." And the different ways in which he served mush and milk for breakfast had given him a reputation which made him the "envy of the other chefs in the neighborhood."

Black Bears in the Santa Cruz Mountains

Occasionally, black bears were encountered in the Santa Cruz Mountains, perhaps in part as a result of the declining grizzly population.

1890: An Italian who worked as a "swamper" trimming felled trees into logs for a sawmill at the summit had a lively encounter with a black bear. Macaroni, as he was called, as his real name was too difficult to pronounce, borrowed a gun and “went up the canyon to shoot something.”

He disturbed a black bear that was taking a nap. After shooting at the bear, but only slightly injuring it, he found he had to run for his life. Realizing he would lose a straight race, he dodged round a large redwood, the bear dodged too. So began a race around the tree that by accounts lasted several hours.

Santa Cruz Sentinel: "At last, he remembered he had a gun in his hand and managed to load it, made a desperate spurt to catch up with the bear, and shot it in the back."

Two of the boys who went back with Macaroni to bring the dead bear in, declared that the Italian and bruin had worn a well-beaten track around the redwood. The bear weighed a little over 200 pounds. 

1899:  In December 1899, butcher W. H. Dool of Boulder Creek sent a 300 pound black bear to the Popular Meat Market in Santa Cruz. The bear had been shot by Henry Middleton in the Big Basin.

Middleton had “captured” a Gatling gun “from the Filipinos” and wanting to “experiment” with it took it to a place near his mill. He fired a single shot and saw a bear approaching. Middleton had long wanted to kill a bear and saw this as his opportunity. So, as the bear came running towards him, he fired a shot which entered the bear's head.

Santa Cruz Evening Sentinel: "Bruin saw he had no business with the Mayor of Boulder Creek, and decided that the Big Basin was too small to hold both. As the bear turned to run another shot was fired with fatal effect."