Image ID:  FHS3258
Image Date:   1950
Image Title:   [The "real" Smokey Bear in a plane on his way to the Washington Zoo, 1950.]
Image Caption:   Caption 1: No. 7 -- Enroute to Washington, Smokey delighted crowds at stop-off points as he sat in the lap of Homer Pickens of the New Mexico Game and Fish Commission and spelled the pilot at the controls.

Caption 2: [The "real" Smokey Bear in the cockpit of a New Mexico Game and Fish Commission plane, secured with a harness and chain and being held by Pickens. The cub has his paws on the plane's controls.]

[This image is one of many promotional photos taken of Smokey in 1950 (see also FHS image ID# FHS3253-3254, FHS3256-3257, and FHS3259-3263). This bear cub was cared for by New Mexico Game Warden Ray Bell after being injured in the 1950 Capitan Gap fire in New Mexico's Lincoln National Forest. The cub was named "Smokey Bear" after the character created in 1944 by the Forest Service and the Advertising Council, and donated by the Forest Service to the National Zoo in Washington, DC where he remained until his death in 1976.]
Photographer:   [unknown]
Use Restrictions:   Permission from the Forest History Society required for any use of this image.
Repository Contact Information:   Forest History Society, Inc.; 701 William Vickers Ave., Durham, NC 27701; Tel.: (919) 682-9319; Fax: (919) 682-2349.