Old Mose the Grizzly Bear Traditional Geocache
Old Mose the Grizzly Bear
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(regular)
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This site commemorates Old Mose, the last grizzly bear in Fremont County. The cache is found on Fremont County Road 2 (Tallahassee Road), accessible from Colorado Highway 9 to the east or from US Highway 50 at Cotopaxi (take Fremont C.R. 12 north to intersection with C.R. 2, thence east). The container is a standard ammo box.
On April 30, 1904, a short way northeast of here on Black Mountain (as the crow flies), bear hunters James Anthony of Cañon City and Wharton Pigg, owner of the nearby Stirrup Ranch, killed the grizzly bear they called “Old Mose.”
The bear’s home territory was roughly bounded by Waugh Mountain, Black Mountain, and Thirty-nine Mile Mountain, over which he moseyed, hence his name.
In the 1870s, this area had a small but self-sustaining population of grizzlies. By 1904, he was the last one, a mature bear of 10 or 12 years of age.
He was called “the bear no man can kill,” and after his death the Denver Post described him as “the most dreaded grizzly bear in the entire United States,” saying that he was 45 years old and had killed three men and hundreds of cattle.
In fact, Mose never killed any people and only a handful of livestock, if that. He was blamed for attacks and deaths that occurred before he was ever born, notably that of Jacob Radliff, which occurred near here on November 18, 1883.
Made into a rug, his remains now repose in a zoological museum at the University of California, Berkeley, cataloged as MVZ #113385.
To learn more about Mose, James Anthony, and Wharton Pigg, read Old Mose by James E. Perkins (2002), which separates the facts from the legend very well.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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