Davey Brown

Those familiar with our local backcountry know the Davy Brown name from the creek, trail and campground named for him in Sunset Valley. But few know the fascinating story of the man who inspired these place names or that Brown chose to live in the remote backcountry in his 70s and stayed on until poor health caused him to leave when he was 95 years old. Born in Ireland in 1800, David Brown left his homeland at the age of 12 to take work on a British ship. During the War of 1812,

The ship was captured by Americans and its crew taken prisoner—with the exception of Brown, who was put ashore in South Carolina because he was considered too young to be made a prisoner. From there Brown traveled to Missouri, where he met up with frontiersman Kit Carson, who taught him how to shoot and trap game. Brown later moved on to Texas and became a Texas Ranger.

In 1849 Davy Brown joined the stampede and headed for the California gold rush country. Though he did a fair share of gold mining, history records that he found greater wealth as a hunter, supplying fresh deer and bear to hungry miners in exchange for gold dust. Brown achieved fame when a Calaveras County newspaper reported that he had bagged ten grizzly bears during one week in 1849.

The naturalist John Muir wrote about Davy Brown in his 1869 book, My First Summer in the Sierra, referring to him as “the most famous bear hunter in the Sierras.” Later, in his 1901 writings about Yosemite, Muir called Brown “the most famous bear hunter of all.” After visiting Brown’s Sierra home site, a meadow in the Sierras that he shared with a small California Indian tribe, Muir observed, “Old David seems to have been uncommonly fond of scenery.”

A few years later “Old” David Brown surfaced in Santa Barbara County, where it was rumored he was a “millionaire from San Francisco.” He avoided the social scene, however, and lived a quiet life raising mules and horses on his ranch just north of Zaca Lake. Then in the mid 1870s, for reasons unknown, Brown left his ranch forever.

Taking his mules, he traveled the steep trail over the first of the multi-ranged San Rafael Mountains and down into Sunset Valley, where a local newspaper reported that “he took up residence in a hollow sycamore tree, and lived through one of the rainiest winters ever recorded.”

In 1877 the Reverend Stephen Bowers, traveling through the forest with an archeological and geological expedition in search of Indian sites to excavate, wrote that he camped with a man he called “Uncle Davey Brown.” Then Bowers and the 77-year-old Brown made a trip up the river together where Brown showed him an Indian village site.

Six years later a Santa Barbara newspaper reported an account from a group of local hunters who came upon the settlement of “Old Davey Brown” in Sunset Valley. The hunters said they found Brown “attired in clothing indicating good taste and easy financial means, seated near a tent, cleaning a rifle.

There was a corral for horses, a well-cultivated garden through which a stream of water was running and a number of domestic animals running wild.” Brown told the hunters the story of his “escape” from San Francisco more than ten years ago. He said he had taken sick while staying in the American Exchange hotel, and heard the doctors talking about his death.

He got up out of bed, took his rifle and made his way into the San Mateo hills where he “fought with death single-handed and whipped him.” Brown reportedly told the hunters the event happened when he was 72 years old. That summer the 84-year-old Davy Brown built a cabin in Fir Canyon, constructing it out of native pine logs and hand-hewn oak shakes with his helper, 65-year old George Willis. Brown called Willis “the boy.”

George Willis died in 1890 but Brown stayed on alone in the mountains he loved. He had frequent visitors from the Valley who ventured over the mountains and down the trail to visit and listen to his stories. Although he owned property in the Valley, Sisquoc and Guadalupe and had a large savings account, he said he preferred the simple life of the backcountry, where “all I do is eat, hunt and sleep. I neither drink nor smoke. I quit both when I was 72 years old.”

Mrs. Mattei of Mattei’s Hotel in Los Olivos heard about Brown’s abstinence from alcohol and when he was 94 years old she talked him into attending a meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in the lobby of Mattei’s Hotel. She held him and his health and longevity up to the audience as a shining example of the benefits of not drinking. She then insisted he give a testimonial. “True ma’am,” he said, “I don’t drink now, but I was drunk for 60 years prior.”