Smokey's Beginnings

It was 60 years ago earlier this month that his dad brought home in a shoebox a tiny black bear cub that would become the incarnation of a national icon — but Donald Bell still remembers it vividly.

A typical 15-year-old, Donald wasn’t much impressed by the arrival of the injured bear at his Santa Fe home; his father, Ray Bell, was a game warden, and routinely brought home injured animals, got them medical care and found homes for them at area zoos.

It wasn’t until some photos of the bear, his blistered feet bandaged, made their way into newspapers across the country that little Hotfoot Teddy, as he had been named, caught the attention of the U.S. Forest Service and became Smokey Bear — the living symbol of the fire prevention mascot that debuted in 1944.