By Library Docent Volunteer Andy Ludlum
On August 7, 1926, Ojai District Ranger Earl Branson quietly documented an encounter that, by all accounts, should not have happened. Deep in the Santa Barbara National Forest, he came face to face with a California grizzly, an animal widely believed to have disappeared from the region two years earlier. His official report was factual and restrained, but beneath its understated language was the story of an encounter that briefly reopened the question of whether the state’s most legendary predator had truly vanished.
Read the Story: Museum of Ventura County