Smokey Bear State Park All drives through national forests, and I have been doing quite a bit on this trip, pass wooden signs of a bear wearing a forest service ranger hat and levis, holding a shovel (see ). The signs state the fire risk in the forest. Statues of this bear also appear outside many forest service ranger stations. The bear, of course, is Smokey Bear, the forest service mascot. (FYI, his middle name is NOT ‘The’, no matter how many tourists state otherwise.) People of a certain age remember that Smokey was once an actual bear. I drove to Smokey Bear State Park in Capitan to learn his story. In the years after World War II, the forest service had a huge problem. Large numbers
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