picnic tables bears Vintage photograph of the "Lunch Counter for Bears" once a nightly event featured at Yellowstone National Park. (Photo from National Park Service)

July is National Picnic Month and before you visit your favorite picnic tables in the park you might be interested in one of the strangest picnic rituals ever held in the US - the "Lunch Counter for Bears."

Back in the 1900s, before trash removal was a regular service, many campgrounds would dispose of their trash by feeding it to their hirsute neighbors - bears.

Bears are you may know, are omnivores. That means they can eat pretty much everything. And there was always plenty to eat in the garbage dumps.

These are very smart creatures. Once they find a source of food, they'll store it away in their memory and return for more. That's why the bear dumps were such a popular place for them to hang out.

In fact, at our nation's first national park, Yellowstone National Park, chowing down at the dump grew into quite a nightly event.

A crowd would gather every evening near a few dump sites and watch a show of dozens of grizzly and black bears foraging through the trash.

At one spot outside the Canyon Hotel, the park rangers even built wooden bleachers out of logs where the spectators could sit and get a better view.

Park rangers would ride up on horseback (with a brave horse no doubt) and give an educational talk about the bears.

At the height of the event, the estimated number of grizzly bears that showed up grew from around 40 to as many as 250.

The bear shows grew in popularity. With the arrival of the automobile and new roads, more and more people were able to visit the parks. Around 1939, it was estimated that 90% of park visitors would attend the bear feeding.

Interaction with bears encouraged

In fact, at one point to attract tourists, the park promoted human interaction with bears.

Back in 1919, Superintendent Horace Albright was quoted as saying the National Park Service "had a duty to present wildlife as a spectacle."

To promote this unique inter-species experience, the superintendent reportedly once had his rangers tree a few bears. Then when President Warren Harding visited the park, the politician was shown how to lure the bears down with fresh molasses. In other instance, a photo op with several bears was arranged for Calvin Coolidge and his family.

As you can imagine it was inevitable that the "Bear Lunch Counter" meal would inevitably become a recipe for disaster. So was the human-bear interaction part.

picnic tables Black bear enjoying a meal at a picnic table. (Photo from National Park Service)

Sometimes the bears ventured too close to humans. Some people got hurt. Bears were also injured.

Then it got to the point where the bears were so brazen and used to human food that they started approaching and stopping cars in the park, begging for handouts. Park officials didn't mind.

But eventually, the ritual with the overeager creatures began to go awry. Cars were damaged. Motorists who ventured outside of the cars frequently were knocked down, bitten or scratched. Sometimes overactive bears had to be removed, sent to zoos or even shot.

When WW II came around and the crowds decreased, the rangers saw this as a good opportunity to end the lunch counter show. The dumps were later closed completely in 1970.

Today, as we all know, it is strictly against the law to feed the bears. For the bears in Yellowstone today, it's back to a diet of plants, elk and fish. Trash is now stored in bear-resistant receptacles.

The lore of the "Bear Lunch Counter" is now just a part of Americana.

For this Picnic Month, all we can do is look back and reflect upon a crazy time in history, when our fellow mammals from Ursidae family once dined with humans and enjoyed a rare picnic together.