The Giant Smokey Bear

In the heart of downtown, standing in the shadow of the paper mill, is a bear you cannot miss. He is a towering figure of fiberglass, shovel in hand, flanked by two cubs, gazing sternly over a town built on timber. This is the giant Smokey Bear, unveiled in nineteen fifty four, a little more than ten years after the United States Forest Service created Smokey as a wartime symbol to guard the nation's woods from careless campfires.

In a thickly forested logging region marked by great mounded piles of sawdust, a fire prevention mascot was not just decoration. It was civic pride. For many years the townspeople treated the statue like a member of the family, dressing him for the seasons, a knit scarf and mittens in winter, fishing gear in summer, a blaze orange vest in the fall.

Then in recent years the city council voted to keep Smokey in his traditional outfit only, his blue jeans, belt, buckle, hat, and shovel, and nothing more. For decades it was billed as the largest Smokey Bear in the world.