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This microhistory takes place on or involves the Ancestral lands of the Miwok (Miwuk; Mi-Wuk; Me-Wuk) People of california, including the Central Sierra MiWok and Northern Sierra Miwok (Me-Wuk).

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GB.1859.1 was an adult Grizzly Bear of unknown sex killed by two hunters near Bear Mountain and the fresh water Calaveras River system in San Andreas, California, United States on or about 18 November, 1859. The story first appeared in the Sacramento Daily Union on 21 November, 1859 and circulated to other California newspapers including the Daily National Democrat, Nevada Democrat, Petaluma Weekly Argus, San Andreas Independent, and San Joaquin Republican, in various forms from 23 November, 1859 to 6 January, 1860 (fig. 1 above, and figures 1-7, below).¹ As an encounter which describes an animal’s death, this Bear has been assigned a Unique Animal Number (UAN) of GB.1859.1. This Bear’s history represents an encounter which impacts one or more predator agency physically, and is so classed as a Tier 1 event.

GB.1859.1’s microhistory represents a hunt motivated by or resulting in human consumption of predator animals, involving the trade or sale of meat as well as body parts. While predator length data is unknown for this microhistory, weight data from the sale of meat for $120 total at a rate of $0.20/lb suggests a meat weight over 600lbs (271kg).² Likewise, the sale of GB.1859.1’s “gall,” or gall bladder, to a Chinese American community for $30 USD is significant. Racialized, sensationalized commentary on this sale circulate in several primary sources, contributing to the visibility of GB.1859.1’s microhistory in Californian newspapers.³

Figures 1-7 (from left to right) in this gallery are courtesy of the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC), Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside. Public Domain. Support this institution here.

GB.1859.1’s microhistory stands as one individual representative of the community of animals to which both T.GB.1859.1 and T.GB.1859.2 interlink, both of which offer this Bear’s history more complete environmental and historical context.

The details of these sources describe the presence of multiple human actors, social groups, and extractive industries. GB.1859.1’s microhistory situates the activities of mining and prospecting industries, their associated infrastructure and labourers, as well as water infrastructure and management operations such as those of the Calaveras Water Company in proximity to grizzly communities displaying “predenning” or denning behaviours typical of autumn, late autumn and early winter which precede and relate to the winter rest period (torpor sleep, or “hibernation”) which begins in and continues through the subsequent winter.⁴ The close geographic and temporal proximity between GB.1859.1’s death and the gold prospecting activities of Mark McNicholas at the summit of Bear mountain may interplay with the history of GB.1859.1’s death.

Alongside contemporaneous mining activities, the sources which describe GB.1859.1’s historical presence here refer to several den site features relevant to modern Grizzly populations, including proximity to fresh water, availability of thermal cover and a protected den aspect, and details on elevation and slope which can be used to better understand historical populations.⁵ While GB.1859.1’s sex, maternity status, and health, are not inferable from context in this microhistory, it can be read in dialogue with those of other predator populations subjected to negative effects of habitat inaccessibility or alteration.

The interconnection in these sources also refer to aspects of climate history and weather events and elements in the California Interior Chaparral and Woodlands and Sierra Nevada Forests ecoregions (and the related Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands and Scrub biome) associated with their shared locations and timelines. They describe rain, local flooding, and a resulting, high water table (potentially involving snow runoff triggered by unseasonably warm temperatures). Their details provide context to the historical presence of other wild animal populations of the Calaveras River and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, including prey species relevant to Bears and other predators (such as deer and other “large game”) and chaparral, a keystone plant population.⁶ The publication most local to the events, the San Andreas Independent, postulates relationships between heavy snow at higher altitude and animal movement “down to the snowless [regions]” in closer proximity to American settlement.⁷

The wide publication of GB.1859.1’s microhistory disclosed both the location of a predator community to a wider audience and the presence of other hunters “enjoying a great variety of sport,” suggesting further potential dialogue with the history of the California Grizzly, an extinct subtype of Grizzly or North American Brown Bear with critical relationships to 19th Century settlement, ranching, and hunting.⁸ Additionally, the description of “bear” alongside mention of “grizzlies” in these locations may suggest the presence of the American Black Bear and its associated subtypes.⁹ Should future context support this, the interlinkage of this microhistory with both T.GB.1859.1 and T.GB.1859.2 may suggest a historical incidence of sympatry, an ecological condition which describes the presence of two distinct but related species in the same environment, potentially encountering one another as a result of their overlapping habitats.

The later microhistory T.GB.1859.2 extends the geographic range of this microhistory towards Salt Spring Valley, a predominantly-French mining settlement southwest of San Andreas near the Bear Mountain Range  in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.¹⁰

GB.1859.1’s microhistory involves neither human fatality nor known injury, and the involvement of domestic or companion animals is unknown. This microhistory is not known to involve livestock animals and has no known association with bloodsport.

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The sources or actors in this microhistory are in dialogue with the following microhistories on pmn:

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Notes:

1. “San Andreas.” San Joaquin Republican, November 20, 1859, Vol. IX, no. 276; “Grizzly Killed.” Sacramento Daily Union, November 21 1859, Volume 18, Number 2699; “Gold on Bear Mountain.” Sacramento Daily Union, November 21 1859, Volume 18, Number 2699; Daily National Democrat, November 23 1859, Volume 3, Number 88; “Value of Bear Gall.” Daily National Democrat, December 14 1859, Volume 3, Number 105; San Joaquin Republican, December 21 1859, Volume IX, Number 301; “Value of Bear Gall.” Nevada Democrat, December 21 1859, Volume 7, Number 12; “Bear Gall.” Petaluma Weekly Argus, January 6 1860, Volume 5, Number 21. These articles accessed and included courtesy of the California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC), Center for Bibliographic Studies and Research, University of California, Riverside.
2. “Value of Bear Gall.” Nevada Democrat, December 21 1859.
3. “Bear Gall.” Petaluma Weekly Argus, January 6 1860.
4. For more details, see “5 Stages of Activity and Hibernation.” North American Bear Center.
5. Lana M. Ciarniello, Mark S. Boyce, Douglas C. Heard, and Dale R. Seip, “Denning Behavior and Den Site Selection of Grizzly Bears along the Parsnip River, British Columbia, Canada,” Ursus 16, no. 1 (April 2005): 47–58.
6. California Chaparral Institute. “Old-growth Chaparral.”
7. Daily National Democrat, November 23 1859. Relationships between climatological change and variability with Grizzly predenning, denning, and the Winter Rest Period are significant to modern bears. See: Karine E. Pigeon, Gordon B. Stenhouse, and Steeve D. Côté, “Drivers of Hibernation: Linking Food and Weather to Denning Behaviour of Grizzly Bears,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 70, (October 2016); Katherine A. Kurth, Katherine C. Malpeli, Joseph D. Clark, Heather E. Johnson, and Frank T. van Manen, “A Systematic Review of the Effects of Climate Variability and Change on Black and Brown Bear Ecology and Interactions with Humans,” Biological Conservation 291 (March 2024): 110500.
8. Alexis M. Mychajliw et al., “Coupled Social and Ecological Change Drove the Historical Extinction of the California Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos californicus),” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291, no. 2014 (2024): 20230921, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0921.
9. Daily National Democrat, November 23 1859.
10. Julia Costello, “Salt Spring Valley,” CalaverasHistory.org, 2025; Judith Marvin, “The French of Salt Spring Valley,” CalaverasHistory.org, ca. 1994, (accessed 2025).

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Cite This Page

Chicago

Caroline Abbott. “GB.1859.1.” Predator Microhistory Network. Accessed [Month, Day, Year].https://predatormicrohistorynetwork.org/2025/05/30/gb-1859-1/.

MHRA

Caroline Abbott, ‘GB.1859.1’, Predator Microhistory Network https://predatormicrohistorynetwork.org/2025/05/30/gb-1859-1/. [Accessed Day Month Year]

MLA

Abbott, Caroline. “GB.1859.1.” Predator Microhistory Network, 30 May, 2025, https://predatormicrohistorynetwork.org/2025/05/30/gb-1859-1/. [Accessed Day Month Year].

APA

Abbott, C. 2025, May 30. GB.1859.1. Predator Microhistory Network. https://predatormicrohistorynetwork.org/2025/05/30/gb-1859-1/.

Feature image: Historic American Buildings Survey Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, Calif. Original- 1860 GENERAL VIEW – Metropolitan Hotel, San Andreas, Calaveras County, CA. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Accession number HABS CAL,5-SAND,7-1. Accessed via Wikicommons. Public Domain. Support the Wikimedia Foundation here.

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