The Real Smokey Bear of Capitan
Near Ruidoso, New Mexico
Just north of Ruidoso, in the little town of Capitan, is the grave of one of the most famous Americans who was never a person at all. Smokey Bear, the cartoon face of wildfire prevention, was invented on a poster before there was ever a living bear. But in the spring of nineteen fifty, a wildfire called the Capitan Gap fire tore through the Capitan Mountains right here, and afterward a rescue crew found a tiny black bear cub, only about five pounds and roughly three months old, clinging to a scorched tree.
His paws and hind legs were burned. At first they called him Hotfoot Teddy, but the country soon knew him by another name, Smokey. A New Mexico game warden named Ray Bell flew the cub to Santa Fe, where a veterinarian treated his burns, and from there Smokey traveled all the way to the National Zoo in Washington, arriving on June twenty-seventh, nineteen fifty, to a crowd of hundreds.
He lived a long life as a living symbol, and when he died in November of nineteen seventy-six his body was brought home. He rests today in Smokey Bear Historical Park, in the town where his story began.
