Haven’t you herd?
A decades-old mystery at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science involving the whereabouts of a beloved 650-pound taxidermied bison has finally been solved. Remarkably, it never even left Colorado.
The mounted bison, which hadn’t been seen for 50 years, was one of an original set of five acquired by naturalist Edwin Carter in the 19th century, disappeared from the museum sometime in the mid-20th century. Over time, staff and historians speculated about its fate. By the 2000s, the “missing bison” had become something of a legend among museum employees.
“I had heard all sorts of rumors about where the bison may be. Some people were saying Wyoming, others said closer to the museum, but the truth was that nobody really knew where the bison had ended up,” Andrew Doll, the museum’s collections manager for zoology and health sciences, said in a news release.
Now, they have an answer. And the Buffalo is back home. A half century later.
In 2022, new DMNS staffer Natalie Patton heard about the museum’s long-missing bison during her orientation tour, which stuck with her.
A 2023 Denverite article renewed public interest in the mystery and, later that year, after Patton began working at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Golden, she spotted a familiar-looking bison mount in the Pahaska building’s gift shop.
Suspecting a connection, she told curator Rebecca Jacobs, who had also been investigating the mount’s unclear origins.
Together, Jacobs and Patton reached out to Doll, who verified the match by identifying the same distinctive horn gouge visible in photographs from the 1920s.
“That was the moment I knew for sure,” Doll said. “It lined up perfectly. This was our missing bison!”
The two buildings are just over 20 miles apart from each other.
Although the route by which the specimen traveled to the Pahaska building may never be fully documented, archival clues suggest the transfer likely occurred during an era when DMNS, the Denver Zoo, and the Buffalo Bill Museum were administered under the City of Denver, and informal loans or transfers were common, and sometimes never properly recorded.
At one point, when the Buffalo Bill Museum moved buildings in 1979, the bison may have been left behind or shifted to less formal display space.
Once confirmed, museum teams from DMNS, the Buffalo Bill Museum, and Denver Mountain Parks coordinated the extraction and transport of the 650-pound mount. The process involved dismantling doors, building ramps, and securing the specimen in a box truck for the trip down the mountain.
Despite decades of display and exposure to sun damage, the bison remains in relatively good condition. It is now safely housed at DMNS’s Avenir Collections Center alongside its four “sibling” Carter bison.
When asked if the bison might return to public display, Doll said there are no concrete plans at the moment, but that could change.
“These bison were taken off exhibit years ago, but we've kept them safe in the meantime. Someday perhaps we’ll find a good reason to bring them back out — maybe even as part of telling their own remarkable history,” he said.
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