Golden Gate Park’s bison used to be chaotic escape artists — until one major change was made

The current drama-free herd, which continues to live in a paddock west of Spreckels Lake in the park, hasn’t had a reported escape attempt since 1995. Contrast that with the 1920s, when 25 buffalo broke free of their fencing — roaming from Fifth to 43rd avenues for nearly a full day before the final bull was captured.

The herd was high maintenance from the start in 1891, when park leaders started a breeding program to help build back U.S. bison numbers — which had dropped from 30 million to just a few hundred in the 1880s. The first animal was purchased for $1,000, joining deer and antelope in an enclosure near where Kezar Stadium stands now. (The park also had everything from bears to goats that pulled carts with children — serving as the city’s zoo until an official one was founded in 1929.)

On the day the first bull arrived, named after nature-loving but mostly unremarkable 23rd president Benjamin Harrison, park leaders asked each other how high bison can leap. Unable to confirm the height, they added 3 feet of wire above the 5 feet of wood fencing.

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It wasn’t enough.

The Chronicle reported at least two escape attempts by the growing herd in the 1890s, before a deadly Dec. 12, 1899, breakout while the bison were being moved to a more secure paddock near Stow Lake. When a bull roamed off the path, a park police official identified as Captain Thomson struck it with a braided leather rope, and the animal attacked.

“The infuriated beast wheeled, and, lowering his horns, struck the horse Thomson was riding, inflicting a wound 18 inches long and throwing horse and rider,” The Chronicle reported. “... Thereafter the captain remembers only a pair of fierce, glaring little eyes close to his face.”

Thomson lived, but was hospitalized for a week with hoof wounds. The severely gored horse was euthanized with a revolver on the spot.

Golden Gate Park Superintendent John McLaren felt the bison were a growing nuisance, and park leaders in 1918 reportedly suggested killing them off, under the guise of providing food to help the war effort.

“Park Buffaloes to Die to Save Meat,” a Feb. 14, 1918, Chronicle article was headlined, reporting that seven bison “are to be sacrificed because McLaren desires to save a few dollars for the city of San Francisco by feeding some of the (bison) to the bears.”

Chronicle readers protested, park leaders walked back the remarks, and the bison were saved — creating opportunity for their biggest escape.

On the night of July 23, 1924, with the herd numbering in the dozens, a 2,000-pound male used brute strength to simply charge out of the paddock.

“The animal shattered a fence with its head,” The Chronicle reported. “In a short time the remainder of the herd had broken loose and scattered in all directions, leaving the trees and the grasses and taking to the lighted streets.”

Police received the first report of stray bison at 10 p.m., when a woman living at Fifth Avenue and Fulton Street reported a buffalo grazing on her lawn. The animals, apparently dazed by streetlamps, were not hard to catch at night. But when dawn broke, they grew bolder and more aggressive.

“Hysterics and sobriety pledges followed in the wake of the animals after their escape last night and their unguided roamings through the residential districts,” The Chronicle reported. “It cost the police reserves an all-night hunt before the escaped beasts were returned to their paddocks.”

The next high-profile escape happened on Halloween night 1940, when a young vandal cut the herd’s wire fence. Bison mostly roamed the park, forcing closures the next day, before police lured the last of the herd back home with a slow-moving truck bed filled with hay.

A successful 1942 bison escape was much more dramatic. While park officials were moving the herd to its new home at Spreckels Lake, children began taunting the animals, and resisting demands to stop.

“Suddenly, in the mingled rage and terror, one of the cows lunged aside and broke away from the herd,” The Chronicle reported. “Then a dumb panic swept the rest of the herd.”

Photos show an unfortunate scene on Fulton Street and Sixth Avenue, with police and park officials struggling with a terrified animal, and later roping the bison cow to a pair of streetlamps until it was subdued with exhaustion.

As decades passed, the Spreckels Lake paddock appeared to be a better fit — with fewer escapes as the popularity of the animals grew.

Then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum in 1984 gifted the politician several bison, but didn’t check with park officials, who said the new animals wouldn’t be a good fit with the sickly tuberculosis-ridden herd. The scruffy old bison were moved to San Francisco’s County Jail’s grounds in San Bruno while Blum’s visually appealing herd moved into the park.

The San Bruno bison, named after mayors including Feinstein and Art Agnos, broke out one more time on Feb. 27, 1995, before they were moved to a pasture in Oregon later that year.

The national bison breeding program that initiated the Golden Gate Park herd was a success — with nearly 300,000 bison living in the U.S. by the end of the 1990s.

Around the same time, the San Francisco Zoo officials who maintain the park’s herd decided to make changes. The worst bison behavior came from bulls at the end of the summer mating season.

The herd became all-female in the late 1990s, and remained bull-free when it was fully replaced in 2011, with five new bison calves added in 2020.

There hasn’t been an escape attempt since.

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Peter Hartlaub (he/him) is The San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub