Los Angeles Almanac Photo at Natural History Museum of Los Angees County
Its scientific name is Ursus arctos californicus. It is the official state animal of California and prominently featured in the California state flag. Once commonly encountered in the Los Angeles area, it was estimated to have numbered as many as 10,000 throughout California. The species ended up being targeted by Spanish/Mexican ranchers for preying on their livestock. Vaqueros hunted and captured California Grizzlies to pit them against bulls in community spectacles. By the early 20th Century, the California Grizzly had been hunted to extinction.
The last known California Grizzly roaming Southern California was shot and killed on October 26, 1916, by farmer Cornelius B. Johnson in the Sunland area of Los Angeles County. Johnson was upset by damage to his crops by an animal and alarmed that the tracks indicated it to be a large bear. Since the bear was likely a grizzly, he further saw it as a threat to the safety of his wife and two daughters. Over three days, Johnson managed to track the bear down and ended up shooting what turned out to be a 250-pound California Grizzly. By that time, Californai Grizzlies, which until that time were the only bears ever seen in Southern California, were a rare sight and Johnson had not actually seen one until that encounter. As it turned out, Johnson's kill ended up being the second-to-last California Grizzly killed in the wild (the last reported to be in Tulare County in 1922). The last reported sighting of a California Grizzly in the wild was in Sequoia National Park in 1924.
Cornelius Johnson with Southern California's last California Grizzly Bear, 1916. Photo in the collection of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.
Johnson's Grizzly was not only the last of its species known to roam Southern California, but, for the next 17 years, the last known bear of any species to roam in the wild anywhere in Southern California. In 1933, San Bernardino businessman J. Dale Gentry, and Los Angeles oil magnate Earl Gilmore (who had established Farmer's Market on his Fairfax property), both members of the California State Fish and Game Commission, sought to restore the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains to their "wilder" states. The two arranged for 28 problem black bears to be relocated from Yosemite Park, 266 miles south, to the mountains of Southern California. One bear died enroute, but eleven were released near Crystal Lake in the Angeles National Forest. The remaining bears were released in the Santa Ana Mountains and San Bernardino Mountains near Big Bear Lake. Normally, Black Bears stayed at higher mountain elevations to minimize encounters with the more agressive California Grizzly. However, finding their new Southern California environment to be "Grizzly-free," the new bear residents quickly expanded their territory to now includes today's suburban neighborhoods and their swimming pools.
There have been serious proposals to reintroduce the California Grizzly, using DNA extracted from remains of the last California Grizzly held in captivity. That process would involve the applicaton of back-breeding, cloning and genetic engineering. In 2014, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to expand that agency's plans for recovering the grizzly bear population, by introducing up to 500 grizzly bears to California's Sierra Nevada. Although the Center has yet to realize their goal of bringing grizzlies back to California, they continue to work towards that goal.
Diorama of Grizzly Bear hunting by early Los Angeles vaqueros, circa 1830s. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Los Angeles Almanac Photo.
