Tourism, as the major industry we know today, began in the 1920’s.  Americans, in their new automobiles, paid good money to satisfy a growing appetite for the weird, the exotic and the just-plain-different.  Natural wonders certainly fell into the latter category.

One entrepreneur, Ollie Hosterman, saw such a business opportunity when he opened one of Pennsylvania’s oldest known caves, Woodward Cave, with its flat limestone beds and narrow, well rounded passages, offered ideal walking tours.  But nature and time had left a considerable mess.

Old-timers remembered the cave’s entrance once being big enough to accommodate two horses and a loaded hay wagon.  The flood of 1889, though, filled the area with sediment.  To prevent future mishaps, Hosterman diverted Pine Creek away from the entrance by building a long, earthen dike. 

In 1934, Hosterman and his parter, Harry Burd, brought in a pair of bears as an added attraction.  The bears were a major attraction for several years.  Then, in September of 1936, a flash flood broke the dike and threatened Maggie’s and Old Bill’s concrete pens.  Hosterman, fearful for the bear’s safety, set them free.  Old Bill, evidently nursing a grudge from an earlier encounter with Earl Vonada’s pitchfork, spotted Vonada, a cave guide, and attacked him.  The bear ignored Vonada’s wife and son as they beat Old Bill

w

ith stones, a flashlight and an umbrella.  Hosterman rushed up the hillside with his shotgun and shot the bear in the throat.  With a groan, the beast rolled into the water.  A search party found him the next day as he floated by the Lose school house.  Maggie refused to return to her pen.  She met a similar fate.

Maggie and Old Bill were buried near the cave.  Their cubs, for a while, had free reign of the grounds.  One eventually ended up at a Bloomsburg gas station and fruit stand; the other was last seen running toward Union County.