Things look scarier in the dark. Perhaps that’s why Frank Clark claimed Old Ephraim stood just a hair under 10 feet tall and weighed more than a thousand pounds.
Experts today estimate his size was closer to seven-and-a-half feet tall, weighing in at around 550 pounds. Still, an impressive size for a grizzly bear and much larger than average.
Clark had been pursuing the bear for years, but had seldom caught more than a glimpse of him in the forests and mountains of the Bear River Range between Cache Valley and Bear Lake in northern Utah.
Old Ephraim had wandered as far north as Soda Springs in Idaho and as far south as Utah’s Weber County, but his preferred range was in and around Logan Canyon, where he feasted on sheep harvested from the numerous herds that grazed there.
Part owner of the Ward Sheep Company, Frank Clark came with his herds to the canyon in 1911. His first summer there, he lost 154 sheep to bears, with most killings ascribed to Old Ephraim, whose presence in the forests was widely reported among sheepherders.
The bear was said to have wiped out 50 sheep in one attack. For years, Clark laid traps for the bear only to find them sprung or swiped away from Old Ephraim’s nesting places and favorite trails. But the sheepman was persistent and his tenacity finally paid off.
While in camp on the night of August 22, 1923, a loud ruckus awakened Clark from a sound sleep. Thinking something was after his saddlehorse, he rolled out of bed in his underwear, took up his rifle, and ran to investigate.
It was Old Ephraim, enraged and fighting to free himself from a 23-pound bear trap secured by a 14-foot log chain, the links wrapped around a foreleg of the towering bear.
“He turned around and I saw the most magnificent sight that any man could ever see,” Clark later wrote.
“I was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t raise my gun and he was coming, still on his hind legs, holding that cussed trap above his head. He had a four foot bank to surmount before he could reach me. I was rooted to the earth and let him come within six feet of me before I stuck the gun out and pulled the trigger,” he added.
“He fell back but came again and received five of the remaining six bullets. He had now reached the trail, still on his hind legs. I only had one cartridge left in the gun and still that bear wouldn’t go down so I started for Logan, 20 miles down hill,” Clark continued.
“I went about 20 yards and turned, Eph was coming, still standing up, but my dog was snapping at his heels so he turned on the dog. I, then, turned back and as I got close he turned again on me, waddling along on his hind legs. I could see that he was badly hurt as at each breath the blood would spout out from his nostrils so I gave him the last bullet in the brain. I think I felt sorry I had to do it.”
Frightening Encounter In Your Underwear
It was a frightening encounter for a man in his underwear awakened from his slumber in the middle of the night.
Whether or not Clark got dressed before skinning Old Ephraim and burying the carcass was not reported in his account. But the bear did not rest in peace.
The tales and legends about the living bear continued after his death, and his gravesite became a destination for curiosity seekers.
A local Boy Scout troop plundered the grave in the 1960s and reportedly collected vertebrae from the skeleton and turned them into neckerchief slides.
They sent Old Ephraim’s skull off to the Smithsonian for study and the scientists in Washington D.C. kept the skull until 1978, when it was returned to Cache Valley where it resides in the library at Utah State University in Logan.
Old Ephraim’s grave remains an attraction still today. Hikers and mountain bikers follow a mountain trail to visit a monument the Boy Scouts erected after robbing the grave. The marker stands 9 feet 11 inches high, the legendary size of the big bear.
Inscribed at its base is a short poem written by Nephi Bott:
Old Ephraim, Old Ephraim
Your deeds were so wrong
Yet we built you this marker
And sing you this song.
To the King of the forest
So mighty and tall
We salute you Old Ephraim
The King of them all.
R. B. Miller can be reached at WriterRodMiller@gmail.com
