Peter Lebec and the Grizzly

The town you just passed is named Lebec. It is named for a man about whom almost nothing is known, except that he died here on October seventeenth, eighteen thirty-seven, and that someone cared enough to leave a record. The record is an inscription carved into an oak tree.

The text, authenticated by the California Office of Historic Preservation when the site was declared Historical Landmark six fifty-four, reads: PETER LEBEC KILLED BY A X BEAR OCT seventeen eighteen thirty-seven. The X was shorthand for cross, the period way of writing cross-bear, which meant a particularly aggressive specimen. The bear was a California grizzly.

His companions carved that inscription. Their names are not known. His name was, apparently, Peter Lebec, and he was, apparently, a French Canadian fur trapper.

Beyond that, the historical record has nothing. No other document bearing his name has been located. No birth record, no employment record, no correspondence, no account from another trapper who knew him.

His life outside the moment of his death is, in the words of the research behind this program, essentially oral tradition. The bear that killed him was a California grizzly, Ursus californicus. The species would itself be extinct by nineteen twenty-two, hunted out of existence within two generations of California statehood.

The grizzly on the California state flag is a rendering made from the last captive specimen, drawn from life. The species the flag commemorates was gone within fifty years of the flag's adoption. The oak tree that carries Lebec's inscription is still standing.

The town named for him came later. He left no other mark on this place than his name in the bark of a tree.