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It is a bye-week for the regular podcast, but this is a bonus from the newsletter On This Day in Women’s History. If you sign up for it on Patreon or on Substack, every Monday you will get a small story about what historical women did on that day. If today were Monday, it might say something like this:
On August 12, 1967, a 19-year-old named Julie Helgeson, and her boyfriend Roy, hiked up the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park. The trail is famous for its deep blue lakes, alpine flowers, and the endless mountain vistas. At seven miles in, there’s a chalet where you can camp for the night, but when Julie and Roy arrived, it was full for the evening, so they were directed to a campground just down the hill, where they happily rolled out their sleeping bags under the open sky so bright with stars. They knew there were bears in the area, but it never once occurred to them to be afraid. Wild animals avoid people, right? Right?
The Making of the First Tragedy
One of the great moments in United States history was in 1916, when Congress created the National Park Service to manage some of our most beautiful wild spaces. In the early history of the parks, the idea was that large predators should be hunted down and driven out. Who wanted a bear or a wolf? At best, such animals stole your livestock and therefore your chance of eating through the winter. At worst, they stole your life, or that of your children. Humanity had spent millennia eyeing these animals with the proper respect.
It was only later, when most of us lived in places where we never worried about things like that, that we could look at these animals with unmixed admiration. With interest, but perhaps without the traditional respect.
Such was certainly the case at Glacier National Park before 1967. The staff at the Granite Park Chalet had a regular habit of throwing food out in a certain place so the tourists could experience the thrill of seeing the grizzly bears come out each evening to eat it. Some rangers had expressed concern that this was maybe not a good idea, but there was no policy against it and the visitors never failed to be thrilled.
In 1967, forest fires drove more and more hungry bears into the people-infested areas of the park. There were several incidents throughout the summer, but nothing so severe that anyone suggested major policy changes. Campers and hikers regularly left food out, either on purpose or on accident, and when they had trash, they just tossed that trash wherever it was convenient.
In the middle of the night of August 12th and 13th, Julie Helgeson woke up in her sleeping bag and realized that a bear was very, very close. She’d heard advice to play dead because the bear will lose interest. But she also knew that Roy was asleep next to her, completely unaware of their situation. She whispered to him to wake him up and tell him to play dead. Unfortunately, he startled awake, and the bear attacked.
Roy was mauled first, but then the bear let go of him and moved on to Julie, dragging her away as she screamed. Roy was badly injured, but he managed to rouse some of his fellow campers in the campground and together they made enough noise and light to wake the people uphill at the chalet. A party came down to help, and they carried Roy back up while he told them to leave him and find Julie.
The woman in charge at the chalet radioed for medical supplies and ranger with a rifle. Concerned about the safety of everyone (and lacking any means to deal with an angry bear even if they found it), she refused to let anyone go search for Julie until the helicopter arrived.
When they did go down, they found her. She was still alive, and they brought her back to the chalet, but she did not live to see the dawn.
The Second Tragedy Unfolds
On the morning of August 13, 1967, the staff of Glacier National Park were working hard to manage this unprecedented catastrophe when another lodge called in with news that was almost unbelievable. The bear who attacked Julie was not the only bear on the move that night. A group of five young people, including another 19-year-old named Michele Koons had been backpacking over by Trout Lake, in a different part of the park. Four of these young people stumbled into the lodge shortly after daylight to say that a grizzly had attacked them during the night. They had scattered and climbed trees, but Michele didn’t make it. They heard her scream “Oh my God! I’m dead.” And that was all.
The other four sat terrified in the trees until the first light, when they stumbled back to the lodge to beg for help. The same helicopter pilot, who had just returned from hauling Julie Helgeson’s body out of the Chalet, was rousted out of his bed again to make another flight out to Trout Lake.
A ranger with a rifle, plus two of the teenagers who had been with Michele headed back out to find her. And they did find her. But she was dead and utterly mutilated.
This double tragedy for humans also had consequences for bears. Because it is hard to know which of the many bears did the killing, more than two bears were hunted down and shot. One of them was conclusively proved to be the bear that killed Michele because of the contents of its stomach. The bear that killed Julie was not so conclusive.
However, it was also found that these were highly stressed bears. The one that probably killed Julie was emaciated, with an injured foot. The one that killed Michele had glass embedded in its teeth and gums. Both had been in constant agonizing pain for some time.
Don’t Feed the Wildlife
There were those who called for increased hunting and extermination of bears. But ultimately, the legacy of this night was far more positive. There was a wave of new policies that are now familiar to anyone who visits America’s national parks. Ideas like pack it in, pack it out. Leave no trace. Don’t feed the wildlife. Bear safety isn’t the only reason to follow these rules, but there is no doubt that the National Park Service made those the policies in order to keep humans and bears apart and safe from each other. They also instituted the bear-proof trash cans at campgrounds and picnic tables. It’s true that sometimes humans struggle to open them, but that’s because—as they say—there is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists. The Park Service can only do as much as they can do.
At the end of the day, the National Parks are among America’s greatest achievements. Humanity needs a little wild beauty sometimes, and in the 21st century, there’s no doubt that the wild beauty also needs us. Most particularly, it needs our respect and caution. Or bad things will happen. To us and to wildlife.
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Selected Sources
Our Public Lands and Waters. “Glacier’s ‘Night of the Grizzlies’: The Tragedy That Rewrote Bear Management—and National Park Rules,” August 14, 2025. https://ourpubliclandsandwaters.substack.com/p/glaciers-night-of-the-grizzlies-the.
https://ourpubliclandsandwaters.substack.com/p/glaciers-night-of-the-grizzlies-the
Smith, Emily E. “The Deadly Grizzly Bear Attacks That Changed the National Park Service Forever.” Smithsonian Magazine, August 10, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deadly-grizzly-bear-attacks-changed-national-park-service-forever-180964462/.
PBS. “Glacier Parks Night of the Grizzlies.” KUSM / MontanaPBS, 2011. https://www.montanapbs.org/programs/glacierparksnightofthegrizzlies/.