Smokey Bear Historical Park

Smokey Bear began as a drawing. In 1944 the Forest Service and the Ad Council, worried about forest fires in wartime, made a cartoon bear their symbol for fire prevention, and by 1947 he was telling the country that only you could prevent forest fires.

In May 1950 the Capitan Gap Fire burned some 17,000 acres of the Capitan Mountains above this village. One crew caught in its path survived by lying on a rock slide while the fire swept over them, and afterward firefighters found a badly burned black bear cub clinging to a charred tree. Among the crews on the fire was the Snowballs, a firefighting crew from Taos Pueblo. The cub, first called Hotfoot Teddy, was flown to Santa Fe for treatment and nursed by the family of the state game warden Ray Bell, and in June he was flown to the National Zoo in Washington to become the living Smokey Bear.

He drew so much mail that he was given his own zip code. He retired in 1975 and died on November 9, 1976, and his body was flown home to Capitan and buried here. Another orphaned cub from the Lincoln National Forest had already taken his place at the zoo.

The park, in the middle of the village, is run by the state forestry division. Its museum tells the story of the fire, the cub and the campaign, and the grave lies under a plaque in the grounds. A memorial to fallen wildland firefighters was added in 2019.