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Cedar City Bison Parade and Remaining Grand Canyon Herd – St George News

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Cedar City residents were surprised to see a herd of buffalo marching through town in 1907. Charles “Buffalo” Jones and his men followed them from Lund to their new home on the Kaibab Plateau | Photo courtesy of SUU Special Collections, St. George News

FUNCTIONALITY – While it was common for shepherds to drag sheep and cattle through southern Utah towns before the advent of the automobile, Cedar City residents were surprised by what they saw a spring day in 1907. Jaws dropped as they watched a herd of buffalo march past. Main Street, pushed by cowboys on horseback.

The Grand Canyon bison herd was introduced to the Kaibab Plateau following President Theodore Roosevelt’s creation of the Grand Canyon Game Reserve in 1906 | Photo courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections, St. George News

The powerful, broad-shouldered beasts uttered low growls and growls, sometimes feigning cowboys as they kicked into a cloud of dust on their way south.

The buffalo had been shipped by rail from Garden City, Kansas, to Lund. From there, they traveled in a slow caravan to northern Arizona as part of a federally backed program to introduce buffalo to the Kaibab Plateau. A year earlier, President Theodore Roosevelt established the 600,000-acre Grand Canyon Game Preserve within the larger Grand Canyon Forest Preserve, now part of the National Forest from Kaibab.

Hundreds of mountain lions have been removed from the area as part of the development of the wildlife reserve. Buffalo are not native to the region and how they got there is a story of good intentions with mixed results.

The mass slaughter of bison in the 19th century remains an American tragedy. Charles “Buffalo” Jones was among those who decimated the buffalo herds for sport and profit, but he later came to regret his role and attempted to make amends.

He was a colorful character that Zane Gray described in his book “The Last of the Plainsmen.” In addition to hunting buffalo, Jones participated in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1893, lassoed mountain lions on the Kaibab Plateau, and feuded with muskoxen near the Arctic Circle.

“Buffalo” Jones helped massacre Great Plains buffalo herds, then helped redeem himself by establishing herds in both Yellowstone National Park and the Kaibab Plateau | Photo courtesy of Historical Marker Database, St. George News

Like “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Jones was a showman who loved to regale those who listened to tales of his exploits – leading one cowboy to say he was “windy as hell.”

As recounted in Ken Burns’ PBS documentary, “The American Buffalo,” Jones recognized the plight of dwindling buffalo numbers in the West and his role in their threat of extinction. In response, Jones advocated the use of Yellowstone National Park as a sanctuary for their preservation.

In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt appointed “Buffalo” Jones as the first Yellowstone game warden to perform this task. Jones was spectacularly successful and can rightly be credited with helping establish the herds that tourists enjoy today.

Building on his success at Yellowstone and after visiting the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with Edwin D. Wooley of Kanab, Jones convinced Roosevelt to create the Grand Canyon Game Reserve and introduce buffalo to the Kaibab Plateau . Roosevelt liked the idea and commissioned Jones to carry it out.

But rather than introducing genetically pure buffalo as was done at Yellowstone, Jones used animals from his hybrid herd in Kansas.

Jones got into buffalo ranching after seeing thousands of cattle die on the northern plains during the brutal winter of 1886-1887. He believed that by crossing cattle with buffalo, he could create an animal hardy enough to survive brutal winters, but gentle enough to be able to herd and profit from it. He called them “cattalo”.

For his crossbred stock, Jones chose short-horned, thick-haired Scottish Galloway cattle. As a marketing gimmick, he called them “cow seals,” because their skin resembled that of seals, which were fashionable and in high demand at the time.

“Buffalo” Jones ran a commercial livestock operation in Kansas where he raised “cattalo,” a buffalo hybrid crossed with Scottish Galloway cattle. He was a self-promoter, as shown in this photo he used to publicize his business “cattalo” | Photo provided by the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, October 1, 2022, St. George News

Ever the entrepreneur, Jones floated the idea of ​​introducing his hybrid buffalo to populate the Grand Canyon Game Preserve, nominally to save the buffalo, but also to make a profit and create game for hunters in the newly created preserve.

It took Jones a while to get his ducks in a row. In the spring of 1907, he loaded 75 of his bison onto wagons and headed west. When they reached Lund, the flock began their long journey through Cedar City and up to the Kaibab Plateau where they settled into their new home like crows in a cornfield. The herd prospered and grew rapidly, another apparent success for the preservation of the American buffalo.

When Jones died in 1919 from malaria contracted on a safari in Africa, he was a celebrity. “Buffalo Bill” Cody called him “the king of the cowboys” and Jones’ headquarters in Yellowstone was turned into a museum. He cemented his legacy by reintroducing buffalo to Yellowstone, with the herd now numbering more than 4,000.

But his legacy on the Kaibab set is less brilliant. Hybrid buffalo delivered to northern Arizona now number in the hundreds and are roaming far beyond their original home.

According to National Parks Traveler:

More than a century after Buffalo Jones’ experiment with cattle and buffalo created strange animals that eventually ended up on the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, park staff are working to reduce the number of herds.

Wildlife biologists with the Arizona Game & Fish Department and National Park Service hope to reduce the herd to about 200 individuals by moving those they can capture and issuing hunting licenses to the rest.

National Park Service map showing the seasonal ranges of the Kaibab Plateau bison herd | Image courtesy of National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey, St. George News

Over the past five years, with the help of the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council, a few hundred buffalo have been captured and relocated to Indian reservations in South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The herd is also culled during annual hunts outside the park boundaries. Permits are in high demand, with tens of thousands of applicants for a few dozen permits each year. Over the past six years, more than 300 buffalo have been captured through these public hunts.

There is a footnote to this story. As a young boy, Alva Matheson observed the bison herd wandering through Cedar City in 1907. In his memoir, he tells the story of a “rebellious old bull” who ran away.

“He didn’t seem to like the canyon walls closing in on him and no rider could stop him – he wanted to go home,” according to Matheson.

The bull retraced its tracks and when the bull reached Cedar City, little Alva saw him outside their house and called her mother to see him.

“The old man followed his trail to Lund,” Matheson wrote. “I think he was hoping to buy a ticket or take a freight back where he came from.”

As a young boy, Alva Matheson saw the first herd of bison pass through Cedar City. Later in his life he came across a buffalo skeleton near Veyo which he believed to be a bull escaped from the herd, date not specified | Photo courtesy of Memories in FamilySearch.org, St. George News

That was the last time Matheson thought of the buffalo until years later, when in 1955 he encountered a buffalo skeleton in the hills near Veyo where he herded sheep.

“It would have been at least five feet high at the shoulders and no more than four feet at the hips, and the skull would have been enormous in life, but it was badly rotted and scattered in pieces.”

Matheson thought it was the bull he saw in Cedar City in 1907.

Descendants of the original Buffalo Jones herd still roam the Kaibab Plateau, but perhaps the remains of one of that original group lie weathered and bleached in the hills of Washington County.

Ed. Note: Sources for this article include “Bison in Grand Canyon: The Kaibab Plateau Herd,” a 2023 article on the National Park Service website; “Buffalo Jones and the Bison That Don’t Belong in the Grand Canyon” by Andrew Guilliford in The Durango Herald, January 7, 2023; “Border Wars: The Contentious History of Mapping the Grand Canyon” by Roger Clark for the Grand Canyon Trust, Spring 2019; Two podcasts by Gabriel Pietrorazio for KJZZ 91.5 Phoenix, October 15 and 16, 2023; “Reflections on Cedar City” by Alva Matheson, Southern Utah University Press, 1974; and the Wikipedia profile of Charles “Buffalo” Jones.

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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2024, all rights reserved.

Fred Esplin is a fourth-generation retired Southern Utahn and University of Utah resident. He serves on the board of directors of the Salt Lake Tribune and lives in Salt Lake City.

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