North America: Three grizzly-bears in a forest next to a carcass. Coloured lithograph.
Image from Wikimedia Commons via Welcome Images.

“Mountain Charley” McKiernan had finally met his match. Face to face with a 1,000 pound grizzly bear, standing almost ten feet tall on her haunches, McKiernan was acutely aware of his mortality. Her paws were raised in preparation for a deadly bear hug, and she was so close he could feel and smell her hot, fishy breath.

Two painfully long seconds passed and McKiernan raised his gun, aiming and firing shakily at the bear’s chest. The bullet found its mark but the bear was only momentarily stunned. Without enough time to reload his rifle, McKiernan beat the bear over the head with it until it broke, but this only enraged her. Lunging at McKiernan, she sunk her teeth into his skull. When the bear released her grip, he reached up to cover his face with his hands and the mother bear’s massive mouth closed around both his arms.

McKiernan’s 26 years flashed before his eyes and then the bear turned and left, as quickly as it appeared, lumbering quickly toward her cubs who were being attacked by the dogs of McKiernan’s hunting partner, Taylor. McKiernan was somehow still conscious but couldn’t move his legs. There was nothing for him to do but to sit and wait for help.

Mountain Charley McKiernan’s legendary fight with a California grizzly bear in 1854 made his name famous throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains. McKiernan was already respected for his bear hunting skills, and even though he lost this fight, it was said that after this encounter the grizzlies let him pass through their territory in peace.

Mountain Charley, presumably before his legendary bear fight. Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

Patched up with Pesos

Charley might have survived the bear attack, but he was left disfigured. The bear’s teeth chewed away his skull above the left eye up to the top of the frontal bone. The doctor hammered together two Mexican pesos to make a silver plate used to fill in the gap in his skull where the bear had exposed his brain. The makeshift plate began to corrode within three weeks and had to be replaced. McKiernan suffered through both procedures without anesthetics which were not yet readily available.

After suffering severe headaches, the second plate was removed two years later. McKiernan was put under with chloroform, the first known use of the new anesthetic in that region, and the doctors removed an abscess that had formed around a wad of hair left in the wound. His pounding headaches subsided after the surgery and the wound properly healed, but he began to always wear a hat low over his left eye to hide the disfigurement.

When a grizzly chewed off part of Mountain Charley’s skull, two pesos were hammered together to make a plate to fill in the hole.

The First House in the Santa Cruz Mountains

Besides the bear fight, McKiernan was known as the first white man to permanently settle in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A plaque on the summit at Mt Charlie Road off the Old Santa Cruz Highway still marks the site of his simple log cabin. In the 1850s and ’60s, it was a popular place for stagecoach passengers travelling from Santa Cruz to Santa Clara to stop for dinner. It was also a county landmark for many years until it burned down in 1899.

This is most likely the replica of Mountain Charley’s cabin that was rebuilt after the original burnt down in 1899. Exact date unknown. Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

What brought “Mountain Charley” McKiernan to the Santa Cruz Mountains in the first place? Born in Ireland in 1825, McKiernan traveled to Australia and New Zealand as a quartermaster in the British Army before coming to California in 1848 when he caught wind of the gold strike. He worked in the mines, somewhere near San Francisco, for $20 a day. McKiernan had never dreamed of making so much back home in Ireland where mining wages were $20 a year.

After saving up his wages for a year, McKiernan ventured into the Santa Cruz Mountains, where land was plentiful, to look for a place to stake his claim. He found it up on the summit at a spot once popular with the area’s native peoples. He began building his cabin on a site littered with mortars, pestles, and flint arrowheads. He later built some of the first roads through theses mountains, including Mt Charlie Road, several miles of which are still in use today.

Mountain Charley built some of the first roads through the Santa Cruz Mountains, including one that still bears his name.

When Lions, Bears, and Wildcats Ruled the Summit

Back in the 1800s, the land was still wild up on the summit. McKiernan soon found out the hard way that raising sheep on land shared by mountain lions, wildcats, and grizzly bears was not such a profitable business venture. Spanish explorers in the mid-1700s made the first written accounts of the area and one padre beautifully captured its rugged wilderness (misspellings are in the original text):

“The adjecent mountains were wild and rugged, the canyons deep and dark with the shadows of the forest. Coyotes broke the stillness with their dismal howls, and herds of deer slacked their thirst in the clear waters of the San Lorenzo. Grizzly bears were numerous, prowling about in herds, like hogs on a farm.”

McKiernan lived alone in these wild mountains for three years. He gave up on sheep and, instead, raised long-horned steer and hunted grizzlies and wild deer. It is said that the deer were still so unaccustomed to humans that one could be shot while grazing in the middle of a herd and the rest of the deer would only raise their heads for a moment before continuing their deliberate munching.

“A rough and tumble with a grizzly,” by H. Bullock Webster, ca. 1874 – 1880. Image: University of British Columbia

Near Death by Grizzly: Just Another Day in the Life of a Santa Cruz Mountain Settler

The mountain man had his first neighbors, the Burrell family, in 1853. This family and other settlers also had frightening encounters with grizzlies.

While out building a fence for his pigs, Lyman Burrell heard his pigs making strange noises so he went over to investigate. There on the trail was a mother bear and her cub running straight towards him. Burrell began to run as fast as he could but he tripped and fell flat on the ground. The mother bear came upon Burrell and took his leg in her jaws, biting down with her huge incisors. Luckily, she only took one bite and then continued running down the trail with her cub. Burrell survived and his leg healed after six months.

A Frenchman living in the nearby town of Lexington was not so lucky.

The Frenchman encountered a bear while out hunting and when he missed his shot, the bear bit his left hand and then took his left arm in its paws. With his free right hand, the Frenchman began pummeling the bear with his fists, eventually hassling the bear enough to cause it to let go and lumber off. He lost his left arm but, as the story goes, the bear was found dead in the woods from the man’s mighty blows.

Grizzly Cubs Make Poor Pets

It’s difficult to say how true these tales are, but what is certain is that grizzlies were a common sight in the 1800s. Sadly, the large number of settlers drawn to California by the promise of gold led to the extinction of the California grizzly by 1924.

McKiernan certainly played his part in the bear’s extinction. He was one of the best-known bear hunters in the Santa Cruz mountains although there’s no record of how many bears died by his hand. Another one of his encounters with a California grizzly bear ended in the mother bear’s death, leaving behind two cubs. McKiernan took the cubs home and kept them for a while until they killed one too many hogs and had to be destroyed.

Mountain Charley’s cabin burned down in 1899 but you can visit this historic marker on Mt Charlie road off the Old Santa Cruz Highway. The marker says he “…settled near here in 1850.”

Mountain Charley lived the exciting life of a homesteader and bear hunter in the Santa Cruz Mountains until his death in 1892 at age 67. His close calls with grizzly bears (and those of his neighbors) are reminders of how truly wild these mountains once were.

Further Information

Please note that Mountain Charley is not to be confused with Charlie Parkhurst, another famous character from the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Highway 17 Tour. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

This mural of Charley Parkhurst was at the Soquel Village Post Office from 1985 to 2012. Artist Frank Hill. Image: Courtesy of Mrwrite

Driving from San Jose to Santa Cruz over Highway 17 is a pretty harrowing 40 minutes with tight twisting curves and crazy drivers. Just imagine driving a team of six horses and a stagecoach full of passengers over the same route—but on treacherous dirt roads barely more than trails. In the 1800s it was thought only a man could handle a job as dangerous as this. And yet, it was a woman in the 1860s, that became one of the most famous—and not to be messed with—stagecoach drivers between San Jose and Santa Cruz. Charley Parkhurst chose to live as a man for over 30 years, deftly handling horses and bravely fighting bandits throughout the west. It wasn’t until Parkhurst’s death that his secret was revealed.

Not to be confused with another well-known character of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Mountain Charley McKiernan, this Charley was born Charlotte Parkhurst in Lebanon, New Hampshire and grew up in an orphanage. Dressed in boy’s clothing Parkhurst left the orphanage and according to one account, met Ebenezer Balch, the owner of a livery stable in Rhode Island, who took him in as his own son. Balch taught the young child to ride horses and drive wagon teams giving him the skills needed to later drive stagecoaches throughout California. He quickly mastered the profession and made the perilous long journey all the way across the country to work as a whip (the term then for a stagecoach driver) on the Pacific Coast.

Charlotte “Charley” Parkhurst. Image: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

One-Eyed, Bandit-Shootin’ Charley

When the almost 40-year-old Parkhurst arrived in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1850, he fit right in with the other rough and tough drivers. Known as “One-eyed Charley”, he wore a black patch over his left eye, lost when attempting to shoe a horse. His lips were stained from constant tobacco chewing and as the years wore on he talked less and less earning him another nickname, Silent Charley. When Parkhurst did speak, he didn’t hesitate to sling around swear words in a gruff voice. The only part of his appearance that was out of place was his clean-shaven face, an odd choice for a man in those days.

Parkhurst proved himself in California not only in skill with a team of up to six horses but in handling bandits. A bandit called “Sugarfoot” and his crew held up Parkhurst’s stagecoach and forced him to hand over the wagon’s strong box (used to hold all of the passenger’s valuables). He calmly acquiesced while keeping all his passengers safe, but before they left, he warned the robbers that he’d “break even with them.” Sugarfoot unwisely stopped his stagecoach again, and this time, Parkhurst shot him dead. As the story goes, Sugarfoot crawled back to a miner’s cabin and, before he died, told the miners he’d been shot by the famous driver, One-eyed Charley.

Charley Parkhurst would have driven a stagecoach similar to this one pictured at Big Basin in 1906.
Image: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

First Woman to Vote in America

Parkhurst took advantage of his disguise in other ways. In 1868, Parkhurst registered to vote. This was 52 years before the 19th amendment granted women the right! Although Parkhurst’s name is recorded on the official poll list for the election of 1868, it is unknown whether he actually cast his ballot. Still, there is a plaque at his grave, as well as at the Soquel Fire Station and Soquel Post Office, that commemorates him as the first woman to vote in the United States of America.

A Secret Revealed

During his 30 years as a stagecoach driver, Parkhurst became known as one of the best in California. In the late 1860s, as traveling by train began to replace the need for stagecoaches, Charley retired as a whip and tried his hand at other ventures. He is rumored to have raised cattle on Bean Creek and may have opened a stage station and saloon between Santa Cruz and Watsonville. It seems more certain that he worked as a skilled lumberjack for several years until rheumatism and cancer of the mouth forced him to stop.

Parkhurst’s secret was finally revealed upon his death in 1879. His reasons for choosing this lifestyle are unknown, but we can safely assume that Parkhurst would never have become a famous stagecoach driver as a woman. You can visit his grave today at the Pioneer Cemetery at 44 Main Street in Watsonville, California.

Charler Parkhurst’s grave marker.
Photo: Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.

Further Information

• Charley’s Choice: The Life and Times of Charley Parkhurst. Fern J. Hill. 2008.
• The Whip, by Karen Kondazian. Hansen Publishing Group LLC. 2012.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Highway 17 Tour. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.