Old Ephraim story as told by Frank Clark

[Medsker]

My grandpa helped skin the bear. He was in the sheep camp next to Clark's. Marc is heading up there so I though I would post this for anyone that wants it.

Now to the final act: On August 21, 1923, I visited the trap and he had drummed the wallow into a newly built one so I carefully changed the trap to this newly built bath. I was camped one mile down the canyon in a tent. That night was a fine, beautiful, starlight night and I was sleeping fine when I was awakened by a roar and groan near camp. I had a dog but not a sound came from the Dog. I tried to go hack to sleep but no chance so I got up and put on my shoes but no trousers. I did take my gun, a 25-35 cal. carbine with seven steel ball cartridges, and walked up the trail. It was darker than hell and plenty cold for B.V.D.'s. I did not know that it was Eph, in fact I thought, it was a horse that was down. Eph was in the creek in some willows and after I had got past him he let me know all at once that it was not a horse. What should I do? Alone, the closest human being three miles away and Eph between me and camp. I listened and could hear the chain rattle and so did my teeth. I decided to get up on the hillside and wait for him. I spent many hours up there, I had no way of knowing how many, listening to Eph's groans and bellows. Daylight came at last and now it was my turn. I can assure you that no Indian ever went to the attack with more joy than I did this dawn. Eph was pretty well hidden in the creek bottom and willows so I threw sticks in to scare him out but he slipped out and went down by the tent and crawled into the willows there. I got close to the tent I could see a small patch of hide so I fired at it and grazed the shoulder. And now for the greatest thrill .of my life, Ephraim raised up on his hind legs with his back to me and a 14 foot log chain wound around his right arm as carefully as a man would have done it and a 23 pound Bear trap on his foot and standing 9 feet 11 inches high. He could have gone that way and have gotten away but and I saw the most magnificent sight that any man could ever see. 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 fell back but came again and received five of the 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. 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 from his nostrils so I gave him the last bullet in the brain. I think I felt sorry I had to do it.

And there you have it.

Medsker

 

[mbryson]

Good stuff! How much of the story do you have. I was told it around a campfire a few times when I was a youth near the site. I'd like to give as accurate of a depiction as I can

 

[Spork]

They would tell stories about Old Ephraim around the campfire growing up, his grave is a great place to visit if people haven't been, there is a big stone that is supposed to be the same height Old Ephraim stood and it's massive.

 

[Medsker]

Good stuff! How much of the story do you have. I was told it around a campfire a few times when I was a youth near the site. I'd like to give as accurate of a depiction as I can

Since my Grandpa was there around that time he spent years going around to different scouting events etc. telling the story. I don't have anything written down by him. I could tell you the story but it would be to long to be written here. I can add that the next morning many different sheep herders came around to look at the bear and help skin it out. Frank kept all of the claws and the hide and then they burned the rest and buried it. Several years later a boyscout troop dug it up and found a few bones and the skull (slightly burned). The skin was thrown up on the loft in his barn and the moths ate it down to nothing, the claws he gave one each to all of his children and grandchildren and before he died he wanted to see one and none of them could find the claw they were given. The skull spent time in the Smithsonian (it was the only bear that was given the name of Old Eph instead of a number) and then was returned to Utah and is currently in the basement of some building in Utah State.

The story I gave you was written right before Frank died. The story goes he was on his death bed and figured he needed it written down so he told the story quickly and that is what I have shared. I actually have a longer written account by Frank Clark and also a long written account by my grandfather but I have no scanner to get them to you. I will try to take pics of them but I doubt that will work. If it does work I'll post them up.

 

[Medsker]

OK I took pictures. You can read the story off of them. The Fred Summers ones are harder to read because they are a copy of a copy of a copy (etc) but you can still make them out. Anyone that wants them PM me your e-mail address and I will send them out in one big group e-mail tomorrow (there are two of them).

Medsker

 

[Kevin B.]

Wow. Thanks for sharing.

 

[mbryson]

http://news.hjnews.com/news/article_0e974452-a9d3-11e0-8c09-001cc4c002e0.html


Jonathan, I would be surprised if Frank Clark's nephew wasn't the guy who talked to our scout group when I was a kid. He did a GREAT job and I remember how he told the story even now. I'd love to find out if someone has taken the torch from him to tell the story to groups.

By Kate DuHadway | 2 comments Frank Clark, the man who killed Utah's last and biggest grizzly bear, was a humble, mild-mannered man, says 70-year-old Dennis Thompson of Smithfield.
Clark told his story to Thompson's Scouting group when Thompson was around 14 or 15, he said, and Clark was in his 70s.
"Frank Clark wasn't a very big man," Thompson said. "He was a very meek, very mild, very humble man. Just the typical, what would you say, salt of the earth."
Now Clark and the 9-foot-11-inch, 1,100-pound grizzly he killed, named Old Ephraim, have found their place in Cache Valley legend. Old Ephraim's skull, once displayed at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., now resides at Utah State University's special collections library, and a 9-foot, 4.5-ton stone monument marks the hollow where the behemoth grizzly met his fate.
Not only was Old Ephraim the largest Utah grizzly bear on record, he was probably also the smartest and stealthiest, said professional storyteller Daniel Bishop.
"He was only actually seen by a few people," Bishop said. "But he managed to do quite a bit of damage to the sheep population."
But Clark, who herded sheep in Logan Canyon, was sick of seeing his flock become the bear's lunch and tried for years to trap him, setting traps in the bear's favorite wallows and then covering them with mud and silt so the place looked undisturbed, Bishop said.
"That trick worked on many a bear," Bishop said. But not on Old Ephraim. Bishop said Clark's nemesis "would pull the trap out of the wallow or out of the stream without setting it off," setting the trap to the side so he could then use the wallow.
But on Aug 22, 1923, Clark got lucky, Bishop said.
"Frank was out at his camp, when he heard Old Ephraim yell, which he said was one of the most frightening sounds he'd ever heard in his life- he couldn't tell if it was animal or human," Bishop said. "He took his rifle and his dog, and then, without bothering to put his pants on, went out in his undies and came face to face with the biggest bear in Utah at the time."
Bishop said the old bear was either extra tired or had gotten a little careless, and stepped right into one of the Clark's traps. But even with one leg clamped to the heavy iron trap, the fight wasn't over yet.
"The bear was smart enough to know who did it - and came after Frank," Bishop said. At that point, it was either Clark or the bear, and Bishop said it took Clark seven shots with his rifle to finally bring the legendary carnivore down.
A group of Scouts later erected a monument near the site of Old Ephraim's demise, which today bears this subscription by Nephi J. Bott:
"Old Ephraim, Old Ephraim, your deeds were so wrong;
Yet we build 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."
Now the grizzly's final resting place amongst the quaking aspen and lupine meadows of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest can be reached by foot, mountain bike, four-wheeler, or, in the dry summer months, by any regular car, Stokes Nature Center board member Jim Akers said, who has ridden there on his mountain bike.
According to the 2004 Cache Trails handbook by Jim Sinclair, the hike to Old Ephraim's grave starts at the Willow Creek trailhead up Right Hand Fork in Logan Canyon, following the original wagon road to Bear Lake, then cuts off to the right in a separate trail marked "Ephraim Cutoff Trail."
For those who don't have the stamina for a 12-mile round trip hike, a well-maintained dirt and gravel road leading to Old Ephraim's grave snakes its way from Logan Canyon's Temple Fork turnoff, through 9.8 miles of pine and aspen forests interspersed with sweeping alpine meadows of yellow mule-ear flowers.
Akers said in the late summer months, when conditions are dry, "any sedan could get there," but conditions can be quite muddy in spring and early summer. This year, the road was dry and in good shape as of July 6, and although a mini-van could make it, four-wheel drive would be helpful along some of the steeper parts of the narrow gravel road.
It's on backcountry roads like these that Thompson and his friend John Sweigart, 65, like to spend their days riding through the mountains on Thompson's red Polaris Razor ATV.
"This is so beautiful to me, I don't have the vocabulary to explain it to people," said Sweigart, who moved to Smithfield from California about five years ago.
But because he doesn't want Cache Valley to get too overcrowded, he keeps the beauty of Bear River range to himself.
"I tell all my friends in California that (moving here) is the biggest mistake I ever made," Sweigart joked.
"This area up here is probably one of the best areas around," Thompson said. "You've got all type of variety for four-wheeling. You can go to Bear Lake and have a hamburger ... you can go all the way to West Yellowstone from here (on the backroads)."
In an event sponsored by the Stokes Nature Center, Bishop will be telling the story of the famous bear and his fate at Old Ephraim's grave on Aug. 20 this year, two days before the anniversary of the bear's death. A carpool will leave the Logan Ranger Station at 6 p.m., and the cost is $5.

 

[Medsker]

At my family gatherings it is my Uncle Scott. Coincidentally our Summers reunion is in Paris Canyon up by Bear Lake next weekend where he always tells it on Friday night. I'll have to see if I can find a tape recorder and see if I can tape him and then write it down. Of course he has been telling it for years and quite possibly has embellished it here and there

 

[mbryson]

At my family gatherings it is my Uncle Scott. Coincidentally our Summers reunion is in Paris Canyon up by Bear Lake next weekend where he always tells it on Friday night. I'll have to see if I can find a tape recorder and see if I can tape him and then write it down. Of course he has been telling it for years and quite possibly has embellished it here and there

Would you mind asking him if he would address a group of scouts with his story? Embellishment NEVER happens . I'd make it a Friday night that is convenient for him if he's willing.

 

[Medsker]

Would you mind asking him if he would address a group of scouts with his story? Embellishment NEVER happens . I'd make it a Friday night that is convenient for him if he's willing.

I'll talk to him. I know he is extremely busy. He works a lot and even though he should be retired he had to go back to work to support his 3 granddaughters that live with him (20 year old daughter got knocked up twice (twins) and she just left them). I don't know your plans on Friday the 27th but you are more than welcome to come listen to the story. He will tell it around dark. Let me know and I can give you directions. You can run up to the Ice caves and explore.

 

[sixstringsteve]

I have portable recording units if he'd like to record the story. i love a good story.

 

[Medsker]

I have portable recording units if he'd like to record the story. i love a good story.

I'm more old school...I just have my dad's old dictating recorder and my daughter that types 110 words per minute