On our state flag. On the sports fields of our schools and universities. On the labels of our beer and wine bottles. This exhibition explores that echo in the form of grizzly bears from afar. The California grizzly shared many characteristics with its still surviving cousins in North America. The images depicted in this exhibition are taken from that ursine stock, prominently featured is the Alaskan brown bear, which the California Grizzly was especially akin.
The Grizzly, emblem of California, was once numerous and dominant, is no more, and unable to tell its own story. This collection of natural history photos attempts to explore how this iconic beast would fit into the scenes of the San Francisco Bay area.
Purpose
To explore the lost icon of California and how it relates to us today. Does it even matter? And should you even care that the icon emblazoned across California’s finest institutions is gone forever? Exterminated, extirpated, made extinct by the modern California man.
Range of Ursus arctos: Former and Present
Photo Locations
Brooks River, Alaska, Katmai National Park Margot Creek, Alaska, Katmai National Park Naknek Lake, Alaska, Katmai National Park MikFik Creek, Alaska McNeil River, Alaska Denali National Park, Alaska Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming Glacier National Park, Montana
Not a California GrizzlyB1: An average of 6 men are killed yearly in California by grizzly bears, many more injured. “Almost all of these hurt or killed by a grizzly was trying to hunt it and enraged the beast by stinging it with a bullet.” – JS Hittel, 1863 B2: “If you play with a bear, you must take the bear’s play.” A common saying in old California; and appreciated in full by those who tussled with California grizzlies.B3: A group of 10 Spanish Californians, with a relay of horses, “lassoed and killed forty bears in one night” at the cattle slaughtering ground near the town of Mountain View.B4: Bear and bull fights were held all-over early California, including San Jose. San Francisco sponsored this event until the 1860s. Monterey’s last official Bear and Bull fight was in 1881.
B5: Our home, the community of Mountain View and surrounding areas, was teeming with grizzly bears in former times.F1A: The grizzlies of California probably resembled their counterparts elsewhere in North America, given some similarities in food resources and the landscape in the coastal areas of Alaska and British Columbia.F1B: Bear traps, made of redwood, were still visible as recent as 1952, in the Santa Lucia mountains of Monterey County. Perhaps to this day there still exists physical evidence in these hills of the California grizzly?F1C: The largest stock of information about the California Grizzly come from hunting narratives. Accounts of “How I killed the bear” in 1800s California are as verbose as they are today, when describing similar episodes in other regions.F1D: “Youth yet unborn will pole up the Missouri with Lewis and Clark, or climb the Sierras with James Capen “Grizzly” Adams, and each generation in turn will ask: Where is the big white bear?”F2A: 1924- When the last grizzly sighted in California was shot in Sequoia National Park. Less than 100 years ago and within the span of a human’s lifetime.F2B: The grizzly is exceptionally agile with its paws. It can strike like a sledgehammer, and move boulders. It boxes with lightning-like rapidity….or it feels an itch, it will daintily use but one claw to gently scratch. F2C: Grizzlies regularly made a habit of cleaning up the beaches of the carrasses that washed ashore, making grizzlies the major beach sanitarians of early California. F2D: Before the arrival of Europeans, it is estimated that California had 10,000 grizzlies living alongside 130,000 Natives, making for an interesting bear-to-man ratio.F2E: The hills surrounding Mountain View once provided the shelter needed by mother bears for their dens. There is a cave near Skunk Hollow, Santa Clara county that served as the maternity den for countless grizzly moms and their cubs. F3A: In 1857, Grizzly Adams built a grizzly trap northwest of Crystal Springs and captured bear cubs he used in his San Francisco menagerie.F3B: In Sept 1861, on Black Mountain in Santa Clara county, the state botanist reported seeing an abundance of grizzly tracks navigating through the chaparral.F3C: In March 1776, the Anza expedition was making its way north up the SF peninsula and in the hills west of Millbrae and he saw many bears. F3D: California’s state grass “Purple Needlegrass” was referred to as “beargrass” in the 1800s, perhaps because it was eaten by bears in spring, as sedges are today in Alaska coast regions.F3E: The grizzly was a paradox. Attacked in the wild by man it was a deadly adversary, yet when left alone and with an abundant and consistent supply of food resources, it could be as docile as a sheep. F3F: Starting in 1854, the salmon cannery industry grew rapidly in the Bay Area. In 1864 one cannery packed 2,000 48-lb cases of salmon, increasing to 200,000 cases by 1882. By 1916 all SF Bay commercial fishing operations had ceasedL1: Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness to heaven; one may never get there. L2: In 1909 there were grizzlies in every major mountain mass, today only four states have any at all. There seems to be a tacit assumption that if grizzlies survive in Canada and Alaska, that is good enough. It is not good enough for me…L3: In 1841, an observer noted that grizzlies were “an almost hourly sight” in the Sacramento Valley and that “it was not uncommon to see 30 or 40 a day”. Many other early observers recorded similarly remarkable descriptions of grizzly bear abundances.L4: Only those able to see the pageant of evolution can be expected to value its theater, the wilderness, or its outstanding achievement, the grizzly.L5: Aldo Leopold, through some of his writing, discusses ideas for why it matters the California Grizzly is gone. He promotes a nuanced thought process about appreciating your own backyard as much as you appreciate faraway, exotic locations. O1: During 1850, a traveler en route between San Jose and Santa Cruz measured a bear track that was 14 by 8 inches in the chaparral. This print measures 14 by 11.O2: The California Grizzly was a strong swimmer. In fact, in 1827 a boat near Angel Island in San Francisco Bay came upon one swimming that attempted to board the boat. O3: In 1602 Father Ascension, Vizcaino expedition, was the first European to write about the California Grizzly. While in Monterey he saw California grizzlies, noting that they came to the shore at night to feed on the carcass of a whale that had washed up. O4: Sometimes Mountain Lions would be taken in the live traps designed to catch grizzlies for the arena. When this happened a bear-and-lion fight would be arranged, as occurred in Castroville in 1865. S1: The California Grizzly fished for river salmon…For instance, bears were said to come down at night to [Mountain View] streams, such as Steven’s Creek, when the salmon and steelhead ran.S2: Spawning streams were already being destroyed as early as the Gold Rush days by hydraulic gold mining, railroad construction and lumbering operations. These activities left many streams badly silted or blocked by debris S3: Grizzlies in coastal Alaska regularly fish the inlets for salmon, and those in California probably had similar ways. Bears were observed using their paws to fish along the coast in San Mateo County. S4: The livestock brought by white men proved a temporary boon to the bear population, and campaigns to exterminate the grizzlies sealed its eventual fate in 1924 of extinction in California.S5: Aborigine and beast were competitors for the same kinds of food, a state of affairs that was bound to bring conflict at certain times of year. Farewell and thanks. Please see 4b.io for more information, print sales, and works cited.Thank you to Ariana (@arianakamprad) for helping design the exhibition’s title card and California bear flag motif artwork!
