Santa Clarita Valley History In Pictures
> FORT TEJON
Sculpture: Peter Lebeck and the Grizzly Bear
At Fort Tejon


Click image to enlarge

LEBECK SCULPTURE

thumbnail

thumbnail

thumbnail

October 22, 2013 — Artist's interpretation of the fatal mauling of Peter Lebeck by a grizzly bear in 1837. Approx. 2-foot-tall statue in the Visitors Center at Fort Tejon State Historic Park.


Little is known of Peter le Beck (alternately Lebeck or LaBeck or Lebec) except that he was probably a trapper from France who was killed Oct. 17, 1837, by a bear, presumably a grizzly, and buried under an oak tree on the grounds of what would later become Fort Tejon (next to the former hospital and commissary).

Williamson
Lt. Robert S. Williamson.

Lt. R.S. Williamson camped at the same oak grove in 1853 while on his mid-1850s mapping mission for a practicable railway route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Geologist William P. Blake accompanied Williamson's party and writes (1857):

The surface of the valley is covered with a luxuriant growth of grass, and a deep soil supports groves of magnificent oak trees, some of them eight feet in diameter. ... One of the large oaks bears the following inscription, cut deeply into the hard wood: "Peter le Beck, killed by a bear, Oct. 17, 1837." A broad, flat surface was hewed upon the trunk, and well smoothed off before the letters were cut. It is a durable monument.

The area was garrisoned by the United States Army a year later, on Aug. 10, 1854, as Fort Tejon, the first military fort in the interior of California. The inscription in the oak tree proved not to be as "durable" as Blake predicted. Ann Zwinger, in John Xántus: The Fort Tejon Letters, 1857-1859, (University of Arizona Press, 1986) writes:

In twenty years, by the time Xántus was there [May 1, 1857 - Jan. 14, 1859], the tree had covered with bark the bare spot which held the inscription. A group called the Foxtail Rangers from Bakersfield removed the bark in the 1880-90s and found the inscription in reverse on its underside. ... They also exhumed Lebec's body and returned it to its grave.

The bark is now (2001) encased in the U.S. Forestry ranger station at Fort Tejon, where a marker relates that the reverse lettering was found when "a lady of the Foxtail Rangers" removed it from the tree in 1889.

A proper headstone was placed beneath the Lebec Oak on April 5, 1938 — a century and change after Le Beck's death — as a more "durable" epitaph for the body buried there. Preceded by the words "In Memory Of," it replicates the precise inscription that had been carved into the tree, as follows: "PETER LEBECK / KILLED BY A X BEAR / OCTR 17 / 1837." While it's conceivable that "X" could mark the spot, it more likely denotes the type of bear. "X" was common shorthand for a grizzly.

"Bec," incidentally, is French for "nozzle."


LW2543a: 19200 dpi jpeg from digital image by Leon Worden.
TEJON CATEGORIES:
• Fort Tejon
• Rancho Castec
• Tejon Ranch
• Tejon Indians
• Tejon Indian Tribe
• Tejon Ranch Development (21st Century)

FORT TEJON

Inventory of State Park Collection


thumbnail

Self-Guided Tour 1996

thumbnail

Huell Howser Program 1999

thumbnail

Hotel Plan 1858

thumbnail

Ruins (Mult.)

thumbnail

Rancho La Liebre 1929 (Story)

thumbnail

Postcard 1930s

thumbnail

Flying A Gasoline 1938

thumbnail

Home Movie 1939

thumbnail

Book: Old Adobes (Cullimore 1949)

thumbnail

Travelogue 1949

thumbnail

Old Gate Pre-1950

thumbnail

Officers' Quarters ~1950s

thumbnail

Headquarters Bldg. 1957 (Story)

thumbnail

Brochure Pre-1967

thumbnail

Enlisted Men's Barracks (Mult.)

• 1857 Earthquake (1)
• 1857 Earthquake (2)
• 1857 Earthquake (3)
• 1857 Earthquake in Harpers Weekly


PETER LEBECK

• Peter Lebeck Story


thumbnail

Peter Lebeck Exhumed 1890

thumbnail

Lebeck Story 1901

thumbnail

Lebeck Grave 1957 (Story)

thumbnail

Lebeck Oak ~1960s

thumbnail

Lebeck Oak & Grave Marker x7

thumbnail

Lebeck Bark x2

thumbnail

Lebeck Sculpture x3

RETURN TO TOP ]   RETURN TO MAIN INDEX ]   PHOTO CREDITS ]   BIBLIOGRAPHY ]   BOOKS FOR SALE ]
SCVHistory.com is another service of SCVTV, a 501c3 Nonprofit • Site contents ©SCVTV
The site owner makes no assertions as to ownership of any original copyrights to digitized images. However, these images are intended for Personal or Research use only. Any other kind of use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly publication in any medium or format, public exhibition, or use online or in a web site, may be subject to additional restrictions including but not limited to the copyrights held by parties other than the site owner. USERS ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE for determining the existence of such rights and for obtaining any permissions and/or paying associated fees necessary for the proposed use.