Happy 80th Birthday, Smokey Bear! - ECB Publishing, Inc.

Rick Patrick ECB Publishing, Inc. The iconic symbol of a bear wearing blue jeans, carrying a shovel and urging people to take care when using campfires is one of the oldest advertising symbols in the nation. Smokey Bear has his roots in the early 1940s, when the United States was at war with Japan. During the spring after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese submarines surfaced near the Californian coastline and fired shells that exploded on an oil field, dangerously close to the Los Padres National Forest. This attack fanned the flame of fear that incendiary shells exploding in the forests along the West Coast could ignite numerous forest fires. With this threat, protection of

Subscribe or log in to read the rest of this content.