Grizzly Adams Was Based On A Real Man, But His Story Is Wilder Than You Think

You might remember The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, that gloriously ’70s movie and TV drama about a bearded frontiersman who buddies up with bears and roams the untamed American West. This larger-than-life character is based on a real person – James Capen Adams – and while the on-screen version made him look like a man born to the wild, the truth is far messier and far more interesting.

Writing in the journal Environmental History in 2015, historian Professor Jon T Coleman explains how Adams only lived the life of a rugged woodsman in California for a few years after a “midlife crisis.”

“The spectacle of a bearded patriarch commanding nature's obedience hid the reality of an insolvent shoemaker who traded his own flesh and blood for a California dream,” Coleman writes. 

Adams was born on October 22, 1812, in Medway, Massachusetts. He grew up here, far away from the American West, where he trained as a cordwainer (that’s a ye olde way of saying leather shoemaker).

By the early 1830s, the shoemaking trade had matured, and small-scale operations were no longer as profitable. At 21, Adams left for New England and entered the unlikely business of capturing animals for circuses and traveling shows. 

According to his official biography, it was during this period that he developed his “unique ability” to read and understand the behavior of wild creatures. Ranging across Vermont and New Hampshire, he caught wild cats, bears, and wolves, selling them to local circuses and traveling menageries.

Clearly, however, he hadn’t perfected this art yet. He was severely mauled by a Bengal tiger, leaving him with severe injuries that left him bedridden for months. With his spirit “shattered,” he returned to shoemaking. He settled down, married a woman called Cylena Drury, and had two daughters.

In 1849, disaster struck again, and their lives were upended once more. After a warehouse fire broke out and destroyed his shoemaking business, Adams headed west, allured by the promise of the California gold rush. He left his family behind.

It wasn’t until 1852, at age 40, that we see the persona of Grizzly Adams take shape. After three years of working in the farming and mining industry of California, Adams packed up his things again and headed to the Sierra Nevada mountains. He grew a famously impressive beard, began dressing in animal skins, and lived off wild-picked berries.

"Perhaps a conventional midlife crisis is too much to ask of who rode into history on a bear's back,” Coleman writes.

"Still, while he considered the months in the high Sierras among his life's happiest, eating nuts and berries in a solitary camp with only squirrels and mice to witness his makeover did not satisfy. Adams yearned for a bigger audience, and he labored the rest of his life to cultivate one,” he added.

Over the next few years, Grizzly Adams essentially became a character that he “coalesced” during newspaper interviews and live performances in front of crowds, which took inspiration from the traveling shows he worked with in decades gone by. 

“In many ways, Grizzly Adams was a buffoon. He staged moments of cross-species cooperation to assert a benevolent mastery he never possessed. His fakery was pretty apparent,” notes Coleman.

He was, however, fortunate to cross paths with writer and historian Theodore H. Hittell, who in 1860 interviewed Adams extensively. Drawing on these conversations, Hittell published The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California in 1861. This vivid, romanticized account ensured Adams’s exploits were preserved and retold for generations, transforming the man into a frontier legend and laying the groundwork for the modern-day “Grizzly Adams” myth.

Coleman goes on to explain that “Grizzly Adams's story doesn't end well.” His star attraction, a bear named Benjamin Franklin, died of disease in 1858, and he became increasingly wracked with money troubles, eventually leading him to sell the rest of his animals.

By 1860, the man behind Grizzly Adams was worn down by debt, failing health, and fading fame. He made one last trip east, briefly joining PT Barnum's circus before retiring quietly in his home state of Massachusetts with his wife and one of his daughters. That same year, he died, leaving behind a legend that was larger and wilder than the life that inspired it.