Today, the neighborhood of Sunland looks like many other suburban pockets of Los Angeles: Streets of single-family homes are mixed in with apartment buildings, national grocery chains, drive-thru fast food spots and a golf course. While Sunland is technically a part of the city of Los Angeles, it feels entirely separate. The neighborhood is in the city’s northeastern corner, near Lake View Terrace and Tujunga, separated from the San Fernando Valley and the rest of the city by the Verdugo Mountains and Interstate 210. Behind it sits the vast Angeles National Forest.

A little over a century ago, some grizzly bears still roamed the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains that ring the northern boundaries of Sunland. That is, until a disgruntled farmer killed the last one in Southern California, unknowingly contributing to the species’ extinction in the state. 

California used to be grizzly country. Before the Gold Rush, an estimated 10,000 bears roamed the Golden State, but white settlers eventually decimated the population, killing the large mammals to protect their property or simply for sport. By 1924, the species was considered officially extinct between Oregon and Mexico.

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And it was Cornelius Birket Johnson who placed one of the final nails in the coffin. 

A newspaper clipping from 1916 shows Cornelius Birket Johnson with the last known grizzly bear in Southern California.

In 1916, Johnson, a Sunland farmer, set out to trap a bear who had been munching on grapes in local vineyards. Other townspeople also got involved in the hunt,........

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