Logan • Ogden-based muralist Cole Eisenhour dipped his paintbrush into a deep blue this month to apply the final strokes to his largest mural yet — a tribute to the legends and history of Cache Valley.
After five weeks of work, the mural now spans 72 feet wide and 18 feet tall on the side of Rage Salons on Logan’s Main Street, across from the new Logan Library. Each day while painting, Eisenhour said locals stopped by to talk about the colorful images taking shape.
“This place has been really receptive to the mural,” he said. “I’ve had a lot more engagement than I think any mural I’ve ever had.”
Eisenhour’s mural features two distinct aspects of Cache Valley’s past: the legendary grizzly bear Old Ephraim and prominent figures from the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation.
The piece, which blends colors, patterns, animals and portraits, depicts Old Ephraim alongside Frank Clark, the man who killed the bear after hunting it over a decade. It also honors Shoshone leaders and history with portraits of Chief Sagwitch Timbimboo, historian Mae Timbimboo Parry, and images influenced by tribe-created beadwork.
The building’s owner commissioned Eisenhour to create a piece representing the history of Cache Valley. After hearing the story of Old Ephraim, Eisenhour knew it would be central to his design. But as he researched the area, he learned about the Shoshone people’s deep connection with the land and realized their story needed to be part of the mural as well.
The subjects he chose, Eisenhour believes, are the reason the mural has sparked many conversations. He said it is the most powerful and important mural he has painted yet.
“It’s a real privilege to have their support, to be able to paint something like this,” he said. “It gets so much traction and attention from everybody coming by, so it pumps me up.”
The mural’s size and complexity required extensive research, Eisenhour said. He spent weeks researching, reading Darren Parry’s book, “The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History,” and consulting with Shoshone leaders to ensure accuracy in representing their history. He hopes his art encourages others to do the same.
“You can’t really tell a story completely with the images,” Eisenhour said, “but they’re touchstones on the narrative behind these two things.”
The leader and the storyteller
(Clarissa Casper | The Salt Lake Tribune) Cole Eisenhour's mural in Logan preserves the stories of Shoshone leaders and Old Ephraim.
Darren Parry, the author of the book Eisenhour read to inspire his mural, said his grandmother Mae Timbimboo — whose portrait is included in the artwork — used to tell him, “No one has ever wanted to hear our story before. One day you’ll have to make them listen.”
The words didn’t mean much to Parry as a young child. But now, he wishes his grandmother could have witnessed how many people do want to hear their tribe’s stories — and those who are excited to commemorate them through art.
“I’ve never really had to make anybody listen,” Parry said, “because I think we live in a time and place where people want to know now.”
Mae was the storyteller of the tribe, Parry said. Without her documentation, much of the tribe’s history would have been lost. In 2007, Mae died before she had the chance to write a book to consolidate all she had gathered over her years. Parry wrote his book to carry on her legacy.
Now, Mae’s legacy will be carried on visually, as she will be seen by those on Logan’s busiest road every day. In Eisenhour’s portrait of her, Parry said Mae looks tired, old and wrinkly. But that is how he remembers her.
“Even when I was little,” Parry said. “Even though I’ve seen pictures of the two of us together and she was a younger woman in her 40s, the image of her that’s on that building is the image I will ever remember of her, which speaks of an old tribal elder with all this wisdom.”
Parry, who drives past the mural multiple times a day, said he is excited to see his grandmother’s face as a reminder of all she has done for him in his life and for his tribe.
“I’m just glad that she’s getting the recognition that she absolutely deserves,” Parry said. “It’ll be so cool to see her all the time.”
The other Shoshone individual featured in the mural is Chief Sagwitch Timbimboo, who was the tribe’s leader at the time of the Bear River Massacre, where hundreds of Shoshone lives were taken in one of the deadliest massacres of Native Americans in the United States. He was also Parry’s great-great-great grandfather.
Parry said he hopes, more than anything, this mural sparks discussions within the community about the history of the Shoshone people in Cache Valley.
“I hope it fosters a way of learning about people that have been here for thousands of years,” Parry said. “Where you live today, people roamed these lands for thousands of years and took care of the land in a way that we don’t do anymore today.”
The Legend of Old Ephraim
(Clarissa Casper | The Salt Lake Tribune) Cole Eisenhour's mural in Logan preserves the stories of Shoshone leaders and Old Ephraim.
Next to the Shoshone portraits, Eisenhour included an image of Old Ephraim, the massive grizzly bear that was known to roam Logan Canyon and terrorize livestock in the early 1900s. A local sheepherder, Frank Clark — who is known to have killed more than 40 bears in his lifetime — wrote about his relationship with the animal, describing the bear as the smartest he’s ever come across.
For a decade, Clark tried to hunt Old Ephraim. He finally accomplished his goal in 1923, when he took his shot after the bear was caught in a trap he set in Logan Canyon. Clark later shared the tale with local Boy Scouts, which, according to Steve Siporin, a former professor of folklore at Utah State University, is probably the reason the story became well-known throughout the valley.
“It became kind of ritualized,” Siporin said. “And after a while, he’s not the only one to do this story. So, at Boy Scout campouts in Logan Canyon, someone sometimes dressed wearing a bear skin would tell the story to the Boy Scouts. So you’ve got all these ears getting the story and, of course, repeating it.”
Old Ephraim’s skull — which is also featured in the mural — was donated to the Smithsonian Institution and remained there until 1978 when it was returned to Cache Valley and placed on loan in USU’s Special Collection and Archive at the Merrill-Cazier Library.
Siporin said Boy Scouts aren’t the only reason the story stuck around. Another reason could be that Old Ephraim symbolizes wilderness and the wildness of the Old West, and Clark’s killing of the beast represents the death of it.
“That death, it’s kind of the recognition that this marks the passing of an era,” he said. “I think it symbolizes that loss of wildness and wilderness.”
Eisenhour’s brushstrokes, however, will keep those bygone eras alive on a main drag in Logan.