If you’re still browsing the Bear Springs Retreat website at this point you must be really bored or just have a lot of time on your hand.  The following tabs contain some additional information that you can tell all your family and friends about and impress them with how much you know about Bear Springs Retreat.   Just don’t be too weird about it.  Remember that every family has that one crazy aunt or uncle and if you’re not sure who it is, then it’s probably you!

When choosing a name for the house and surrounding property, the owners Paul and Lisa wanted to go with a bear theme.  The Bear River is located less than 1 mile to the west of the property and black bears can be found in the mountains of northern Utah.  So for several years they called it Bear Hollow.  The term “hollow” (pronounced “holler” if you’re from the south) means a small sheltered valley and is a common term in the back woods of Virginia where Lisa grew up.  When they were ready to file the legal paperwork for the vacation rental business, they discovered there was another nearby vacation rental property already using that same name.  Sticking with the same bear theme, Bear Springs Retreat was chosen since there is a spring fed stream that runs through the property.  There are still a few “Bear Hollow” signs around the house and property.

Bruce the Bear, perched above the living room, is a black bear from Virginia.  He was shot and mounted by Lisa’s brother Ray.  For many years the bear was a part of Ray’s log cabin home in Virginia until he graciously donated the bear to be a part of Bear Springs.  For several years there was debate on what to name the bear but there was never an agreement until Paul and Lisa discovered the “Mother Bruce” children’s book series.  So the bear was named Bruce after the character in the book.  You will find several of the Mother Bruce books at Bear Springs Retreat for our guests to read.

Paul and Lisa purchased the 30-acre property in 2010, while still on active duty in the Navy and living in Virginia.  For the next 4 years Paul planned and designed the house that would comfortably fit large groups of people and reflect the agricultural setting of the surrounding Cache Valley farmlands. Although Paul and Lisa were empty nesters they wanted to have a home for large family gatherings.  When Paul retired from the Navy in 2014, he and Lisa moved to Cache Valley and lived in Logan for a year while the house was being built.  When the house was finished they lived in it until 2019 when they built the house just to the north so they could begin renting out Bear Springs on a full time basis.  Both the Bear Springs Retreat house and their house next door was built by Paul and Lisa’s good friend and neighbor down the street Marcus Reid.  One of Paul’s hobbies is wood working and building things so he did a little bit of the construction himself.  He built the barn and playhouse to the east of the house, the 3 cupolas on top of the house, the theater room, the bunks in the bunkrooms, the bed in the Kodiak room, the day bed in the Polar Bear room and the bed in the Papa Bear room.  

Bear Springs Retreat is part of a 30 acre parcel of land that is subdivided into 2 smaller parcels that Bear Springs and the house to the north are built on.  The third larger parcel is fenced off as pasture land for cattle grazing.  Paul and Lisa’s neighbor keeps 30-40 head of cows on the land for most of the year.  If you’re here around late winter to early spring you might get to see some of the cows giving birth.  It’s always fun to watch the new born calves running and frolicking within just a few weeks of being born.  There is a small creek that runs through the property that starts out from a spring a couple of miles to the northeast and then dumps into the Bear River about a mile to the west.  There are plenty of frogs to catch around the creek.  In the springtime a chorus of thousands of frogs will serenade you every evening around sunset.  Other wildlife you might see around the property include mink, rock chucks (marmots), foxes, skunks, and raccoons.  Occasionlly you might hear a coyote in the distance, but they’ve never been spotted on the property.  Birds that are commonly seen or heard around the property include eagles, hawks, pheasant, cranes, owls and ducks.  Paul and Lisa raise ducks so you’ll probably see a few of them waddling around the property.  There is a bald eagle nest in the large tree that overhangs the road about 2 miles to the south of Bear Springs on 1200 West so keep your eyes out for bald eagles.  If you’re sitting out on the deck after sunset when it is almost completely dark it is common to hear an owl perched on top of the house or barn hooting back and forth to other owls nearby.  

Here’s some local bear folklore…

“Old Ephraim” was a legendary, giant, marauding grizzly bear who roamed the Wasatch Mountains in the early 20th century.  Originally known as “Old Three Toes,” because of a deformity in one foot, it was a tale by P.T. Barnum that affixed the more fanciful name of Old Ephraim to the animal.

The bear was believed to have killed as many as 15 sheep in one night and was indeed possibly the largest and most elusive bear ever in the Beehive State.

William Clark, a sheepherder, killed Old Ephraim in August 1923. Clark set many traps for the bear over the years, but the animal evaded them. He was finally caught in a trap in the earliest of hours that fateful August morning. However, the bear, reputed to stand 9-feet-11 inches tall and weigh some 1,100 pounds, clawed down the 8-inch diameter tree the trap was tied to and ran up a hill with the trap still on his foot. Clark fired all his bullets into the bear before it dropped.

Years later, Clark reflected on Old Ephraim’s demise to a Deseret News reporter and stated: “I sat down and watched his spirit depart from that great body and it seemed to take a long time, but at last, he raised his head a mite, gasped, and was still.  “Was I happy? No, and if I had to do it over, I wouldn’t kill him. … I could see the suffering in his eyes as he tried to climb that bank.”  Clark claimed to have killed 43 bears in his 34 years of sheepherding, but Old Ephraim was his last by choice.

Various historical accounts of Old Ephraim credit his range as from Weber County to Soda Springs, Idaho. That’s because a Nov. 9, 1911 story in the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper reported that a bear hunting party was looking for Old Eph in Morgan County too. Led by former Utah Gov. John C. Cutler, this group spent several days in the wild and only found the bear’s huge tracks.  Eventually the bear was believed to have settled exclusively in Logan Canyon

Old Ephraim’s legend is summarized concisely by Nephi J. Bott’s poem, inscribed in a plaque at the bottom of the stone monument, erected in 1966 by Logan Boy Scouts, where the bear was buried:

“Old Ephraim, Old Ephraim, your deeds were so wrong yet we build you this marker and sing you this song. To the king of the forest so mighty and tall, we salute you, Old Ephraim the king of them all.”

The bruin still lives on in campfire tales and various tributes. For example, in Bear Lake Valley, there’s the Old Ephraim Pizza, 32 inches in diameter.  In a remote side canyon of Logan Canyon, there’s a large stone monument where he was killed.  The movie “Walking Thunder” (1997) staring actor/singer John Denver’s, was inspired by the tale of Old Ephraim.

(The above information was taken from a Standard-Examiner news article on July 16, 2015.)