Early Fire Prevention Campaigns

2006

Initially the Forest Service used Bambi, from the Walt Disney film, on its posters, but Bambi was only loaned to them by Disney for one year, so a new animal mascot had to be created. The bear's first poster was prepared on August 9, 1944. In 1952, after Smokey Bear became popular enough to attract commercial interest, The Smokey Bear Act, an Act of Congress was passed to take Smokey out of the public domain and place him under the control of the Secretary of Agriculture. The Act provided for the use of Smokey's royalties for continued education on forest fire prevention.

It is the longest running public-service campaign in U.S. history. The initial 1944 cartoon was drawn by Albert Staehle, but for the next 40 years his full-time artist and promoter was Forest Service employee Rudy Wendelin. At the height of his popularity, Smokey received so much fan mail that he was assigned his own ZIP Code, 20252.

SmokeySmokey's real-life counterpart was a black bear cub who in the spring of 1950 was caught in the Capitan Gap fire, a wildfire in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico. He had climbed a tree to escape the blaze, but his paws and hind legs had been burned. At first he was called Hotfoot Teddy, but was later redubbed Smokey, after the mascot. A local rancher who had been helping fight the fire took the cub home with him, but he needed veterinary aid so a New Mexico Department of Game and Fish Ranger took the bear to Santa Fe. Smokey was sent to the National Zoo in Washington, DC.  Smokey is typically depicted as a bear in a biped humanoid form wearing blue jeans and a flatbrimmed campaign hat. He is presumably wearing the campaign hat because at that time park rangers often wore them.

For a short time The Smokey the Bear Campaign also included a wife and a cub, named Smokeout the Bear.      

 Source: internet