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In his one-room cabin, Grand Teton National Park volunteer George Simmons composes his weekly report, which includes an accounting of precipitation, temperature, hiker numbers, root beer floats served and mice killed. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

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It was the year of the 100 mice.

“Black” George Simmons turned 86 in a cabin at the Death Canyon trailhead without even noticing, until the day after, when someone wished him a belated birthday.

The mice ran rampant, as they always do, in his one-room home. Each tail caught in the trap is meticulously recorded.

At the cabin, the White Grass Ranger Station in Grand Teton National Park, time is measured in statistics. Days of the month are noted only for the purpose of logging the happenings of the cabin and the canyon it guards.

Others measure time by Black George himself. For about 15 years, he has arrived once the snow has melted and the ground is firm enough that he won’t ruin the patch of dirt that acts as his parking lot and front yard. This year he came May 22.

He leaves when the snow begins to fly and settle.

But if you come in the summer, at the end of a gnarly road to the ominously named canyon, knock on the door of the small cabin. The greeting will undoubtedly be an exuberant “Yeehaa” from Grand Teton National Park’s oldest-ever volunteer.

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"You've come at a particularly gruesome time," Simmons says to a visitor as he collects two of the 101 mice that met their fates at the White Grass Ranger Station, where he works as a seasonal volunteer. Simmons then looks for Ashes, the raven and "mouse undertaker" who resolves all disposal problems. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

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The total was 90 mice dead in August. Then none for three weeks. On an early October day, four lay on the table, ready for presentation outside to Ashes, the raven Black George has named and dubbed the mouse undertaker.

“You’ve come at a particularly gruesome time,” he said.

After three weeks of finding no bounty, it seemed Ashes had moved on. The mice corpses sat on the porch.

Black George used to put dead mice on stakes in the yard in a show to the other mice their fate if they followed their compatriots into the cabin. But a couple from France several years ago told him it was barbarian and resonated too deeply with their country’s history. Black George took away the stakes.

His beard hangs down to the middle of his chest, uncut for about 30 years and blending with his tangled eyebrows. His face, deeply lined with age and weather, is framed in white. He is slightly stooped at the waist and walks with a bowlegged shuffle. His hearing is failing.

But he doesn’t need sharp hearing to tell of the adventures that pour from him with a simple question. His eyes shine, his eyebrows wiggle in animation and his hand slaps his knee as he leans forward.

His name, like most good legends, comes from the dark pages of history – his own past, scattered over more than eight decades. It is hard to differentiate what is fact, fabrication or mere exaggeration. At 15, he played piano in a bordello in New Orleans, he says. When he was 64, he worked as a stripper at the Golden Age Widows Club in Houston, where he performed his golden zipper act and once saved a choking woman by using the Heimlich maneuver. He tended bar in Montana and spun a roulette wheel in Reno, Nev. He isn’t ashamed of his past, he said, he just can’t run for political office. He’s settled for his current title, the Sheriff of White Grass.

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From his cabin near White Grass Ranch, "Black" George sets off for his daily hike to the "Meter Maid," a trail counter where he tallies hikers and climbers bound for the Tetons. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

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Stumps serve as extra chairs. Field guides to butterflies and mushrooms and guidebooks to places Black George has been, like Russia, Tibet and Antarctica, line the shelves. Others are “wish books,” guide books to places like Finland, Iceland and Morocco, faraway countries he’s dreamt of seeing but thinks now he probably never will.

The cabin is home, even if he is only there a few months a year. Inside, he relives his travels with hikers from Death Canyon whom he offers root beer floats.

His signature drink is an homage to his three sons. While on a family vacation, the boys begged for a root beer float every time they passed an A&W. Their father made them a deal. They would stop at every A&W, and each would have a root beer float. But as soon as someone didn’t want one, they were done. Root beer floats conjure the memory of his boys trying to stomach their third or fourth float, not quite ready to give up.

His signature greeting, “Yeehaa,” comes from his time in Texas in the 1980s. It was desolate, and people were so excited to see a friendly face they exclaimed “Yeehaa!” Black George said.

It is the call that lets visitors into the cabin and bids them farewell.

He rarely leaves Death Canyon, heading to town about once a week for groceries and errands – like buying mouse traps. And on Monday mornings he makes the rounds in Moose to hand out his morning report.

His bed is a faded mattress on a platform in the corner. A desk is nearly buried underneath the computers, printer and scanner piled on top. He gets poor cell phone reception and relies on e-mail for contact. And he’s on the social networking site Facebook.

The cabin was built in 1930, right after the park was established in 1929. For years it used to lean to the right, like a ship at sea. Things couldn’t get lost, they always rolled out from hidden nooks.

In 2008, the cabin was rebuilt to look like the original, but it still has no running water. In the summer he takes “cat baths,” heating buckets of water on the stove and standing in dish tubs while he washes himself.


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Simmons delivers his morning report to Kristen Larsen at the Moose Visitor Center. Park employees find his dispatches, which include jokes and photos, entertaining as well as informative. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

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Black George was born in Kansas City, Mo., to journalist parents but considers his true roots in New Orleans, where his family moved when he was about 3 years old.

His dad took him along on assignments, and he remembers one was covering a levy being blasted with dynamite. His mother worked as an editor with the Times-Picayune until she was 88.

Black George inherited his parents’ passion for fact gathering and storytelling, as well as an understanding that a person is never too old to work.

He joined the Navy during World War II and became a tail gunner on a dive bomber. Once discharged, he graduated from Tulane University and then headed to Washington state to earn his master’s degree in geology. He began work with the United States Geological Survey, a career that took him all over the world, from Montana to Brazil. During his time with the USGS, he wrote a geological guidebook to the Grand Canyon, a river-runner’s guidebook to the Colorado River that was published in four volumes and a journal about a Cataract Canyon expedition in 1956.

Black George married twice and had three sons. One died in an accident in Denver.  Another served in Vietnam and was never the same after he returned. The youngest lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Black George doesn’t understand his son’s penchant for golf but still visits him regularly and this winter will see his granddaughter married.

Retirement came too quickly for Black George. After 31 years of work, he was ready to begin again after only a short break.

He volunteered with the National Park Service. Still in good shape, he went to firefighting and EMT training. He began on river patrol in Texas. From there, he went to Canyonlands in Utah. In the winters, he worked in Bryce Canyon, studying the weather and serving as a one-man ski patrol.

A friend told him about the cabin and the chance to volunteer in Grand Teton National Park about 15 years ago.

When he started in Grand Teton, he began typing the weekly morning report, full of information on the weather, local elk populations and people to whom he had served root beer floats. Each week he hand-delivered them to park offices.

He started the report when working in Big Bend National Park in Texas. It featured a mockingbird named Jorges Negro who was friends with Ranger Black George.

The bird mocked policies the ranger defended. It allowed Black George to share his opinion in a way not attributed to him.

The current morning report includes the number of mice killed in his cabin – until this year, the record was 73 – and how many root beer floats he has made.

Most people don’t share his passion for statistics, so he wanted to find a way to make numbers fun for others.

The report is now a tradition in Grand Teton National Park, said Scott Gunther, a ranger who supervises Black George. People in the park’s offices look forward to reading it each week.

“He’s an incredible statistician,” Gunther said.

But Black George also knows how to entertain.

“He’s not afraid to push the boundaries here and there,” Gunther said.

A few times park officials have had to ask Black George to tone down risque photos or jokes he included.

Gunther met Black George when Black George first started volunteering. He was gregarious and vital, often hiking miles up to the Death Canyon patrol cabin.

“He wasn’t a spring chicken then, but he got out quite a bit,” Gunther said.

Black George was charged with checking a meter set near the Death Canyon trailhead that counts the number of passers-by each day to log trail traffic.

But his real contribution to the National Park Service is his mere presence, Gunther said. He engages the public and makes immediate connections with visitors. People meet him and then return with friends.

Black George’s personal mission is to show people it’s OK to get old. When he was 65, a friend brought his 18-year-old son to meet him to show the boy what could be done even by old men.

Black George didn’t feel old, but people kept attaching the adjective when describing him, old man of the river, old man in the cabin. He embraced the term “old” and decided to show people what could be done – at any age.

Throughout the years, his age has caught up with him.

Twice this year he fell on the trail in the early morning. He adjusted his schedule, going later when the light was better but still early enough to reset the counter before many hikers or climbers passed. A broom doubles as a cane as he hobbles down the stairs.

But age hasn’t hindered his goals. He wants visitors to appreciate national parks, and specifically Grand Teton National Park. He also wants them to feel they have a personal friend in him.

Bob Berky met Black George on the trail near the Death Canyon parking lot.

Black George told him he looked like he could use a root beer float. Berky agreed.

Berky learned of the business Black George and his brother had as children, making and selling corsages. When they ran out of flowers, they read the obituaries and went to cemeteries after funerals to get new flowers to sell.

As young boys, the brothers once captured hundreds of lightning bugs in a jar and released them in a dark theater after a movie. The onslaught of twinkling earned applause from the audience.

Berky and Black George formed a fast friendship.

Black George is a person of adventure, who is still full of curiosity, Berky said.

“He’s a geologist of human nature,” he said.

In an effort to forge instant connections, Black George gathers facts about places all over the globe. He speaks Portuguese, can hold a basic conversation in Spanish, knows a lot of words in German, a few in French and basic greetings in Arabic. He knows sign language and the words to the original Japanese national anthem.

The reactions of the visitors he meets are recorded in sketchbooks that act as a log each season.

Some simply say thanks for the coffee or tea, or root beer float. Other messages are more personal.

“You have and will forever leave a lasting impression on my life. Thanks for all that you do to make the world a better place.” – Lani Edghill.

“We’ve been to Old Faithful, the mud volcanoes and pretty much everywhere else in Yellowstone, but this has been the most memorable part.” – Tom and Mary Guinard, Crofton, Md.

“You are truly an American treasure.” – Zac Thomas, Columbia, Mo.

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Simmons makes his way to the climbing rangers' headquarters to deliver one of his last reports of the season. When snow sticks to the ground, he knows it's about time for him to depart. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / ANGUS M. THUERMER JR.

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The first week of October, Black George knew his time was growing short at Death Canyon. He planned to leave within a week, although he was unsure where he would go – perhaps first to Utah to see friends, then to Texas to see his son. There were only 2,094 people counted on the trailhead in Death Canyon in September. As the numbers dwindle, so does the necessity of his presence. There are days when only a solitary car is at the trailhead.

In early October, a woman broke her ankle on the trail. He went and watched rangers  bring her out on a stretcher and took pictures. Then he listened to the chatter on the radio as they took her to the hospital. He doesn’t help with the rescues. If needed, he channels information from the cabin’s radio, or can offer shelter or food. He is most often called upon if someone locks keys in a car. But in the day of cell phones and AAA, that has become rare.

As the snow stuck to the ground, he knew it was almost time to go. He crammed his things into the back of his truck with its Teton County plates reading “Yeha.”

Almost out of wood, he used the electric oven with its door open to heat the cabin in the final days. He normally leaves a little wood and food in case someone uses the cabin as refuge in the winter.

This year, for the first time, he’ll leave a permanent library in the cabin. The books identifying trees, birds and flowers will stay. They’ll be useful for whoever is in the cabin next summer. He hopes it is him again. It would take serious illness or death to keep him away, but you never know, he said.

On one of his last nights at the cabin, he caught the last two mice, bringing his total to 101. His knew then his season was over.