Meanwhile, Hells Canyon country has continued to cough up the occasional grizzly rumor over the decades, although it should be noted that many of the black bears here are cinnamon-phase and thus easily confused with their heftier cousins. Whether he or she died in the remote plateau forests flanking the Northeast Oregon canyonlands or the brushy breaks of the Siskiyous-or someplace else entirely-we can only offer a vague, if heartfelt, toast. Of course, the very last grizzly of Oregon probably escaped the notice of humankind altogether. Hells Canyon from Hat Point: former haunt of grizzlies, and site of scattered unsubstantiated post-extirpation sightings. According to Jerry Gildemeister’s Bull Trout, Walking Grouse and Buffalo Bones: Oral Histories of Northeast Oregon Fish and Wildlife, however, sheepherders knew of a pair of grizzlies in the Minam drainage on the far western side of the Wallowa Mountains in 19 one of these bears was shot 1. Those Forest Service estimates notwithstanding, the last officially documented grizzly bear in Oregon was killed along Chesnimnus Creek by a federal trapper on September 14, 1931. In 19 the Forest Service reported 1 grizzly bear on each of the Cascade and Siskiyou National Forests, and in 1931 2 and in 1932 1 on the Wallowa Forest, and in 1933 1 on the Willamette. The other had 12 bullet holes in its hide.īailey, writing in 1936, gives a lonesome inventory of the grizzly’s status over the preceding decade or so:
One bear was downed only a few feet from him, as it was rushing at him. Pratt, a homesteader, started after the bears after they had killed some beef cattle. They were of mountain grizzlies and he killed them near the head of Chesnimnus Creek … Mr. Two of the largest bear skins seen in town in many months were brought in yesterday morning by E.M. A brief in the edition of the Wallowa Chieftain recorded the killings of some of the few remaining grizzlies in the high country bridging the Joseph Uplands and Hells Canyon, which appears to have been a real stronghold for them: In the face of Euro-American settlement, Oregon grizzlies seemed to retreat fairly steadily in the mid- to late-1800s to three redoubts: the Klamath Mountains (including the Siskiyous), the Southern Cascades, and the Blue/Wallowa Mountains (including Hells Canyon country).īy the 1910s, grizzly sightings in Oregon had become sparse and mainly restricted to the northeastern highlands. The Last GrizzliesĪ grizzly in Yellowstone National Park, one of the few remaining populations in the contiguous United States. Today, we’ll look at the geography of the bear’s retreat in the state the story of a latter-day Oregon grizzly of much renown and the bear’s ghostly presence on the landscape in the form of place names. Last time, we considered the grizzly’s historical distribution in Oregon.
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