A bear den in a saw log.

"Two natives of Washington: A Bear Den and Dwelling in a Washington Saw Log."

Here's one of those scratch-your-head items that I found recently in my digital archives, an early tinted color postcard, probably produced around 1915-1920, picturing a bear den and human dwelling carved out of a giant log. The story goes:

"This log was cut four miles from Aberdeen from a spruce log 40 feet from the butt which was 13 feet in diameter at one end and eight feet at the other. It is 40 feet long, 9 feet in diameter at one end of eight feet at the other, cut to show at the St. Louis Fair, and is now in Belle Isle Park at Detroit, Mich. There are chairs, settee and table cut inside of the log. When in St. Louis it housed two bears and a large cougar."

If the card is referring to the St. Louis World's Fair, which took place in 1904, then that would place the photo earlier than the date it was produced as a postcard. But that's not unusual — this postcard has at least one other version I've seen.

If the log ended up in Detroit's Belle Isle Park, I wasn't able to immediately find anything on the internet about that... not that that means anything. The only other clue to the origins of the photo is the Northern Pacific log car it rests on, number 69318.