The Gumberoo: A Fearsome Critter From Cascadia

Along Washington’s coast, a beast lumbers through thick evergreen forests. Only a few lumberjacks have ever seen it … and they were lucky to escape its ravenous hunger. Meet the Gumberoo, a fearsome critter from Cascadia.

Early Sightings In Coastal Forests

Lumberjacks first reported seeing the Gumberoo in the 1870s, but it wasn’t until 1910 that William T. Cox documented the monster. He noted the reports and critter description in his classic work, Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods.

But the reports focused on strange sounds coming from the deep, dark coastal forests. Loggers detailed fiery explosions and strange sounds coming from forest fires, not a bear-sized, ravenous monsters.

While Cox was the first to write about the Gumberoo, another writer, Henry H. Tryon, confirmed a handful of sightings in Fearsome Critters (1939). This time, the Gumberoo thrived in burned cedar forests that dotted the coastal timber country.

And we got the first descriptions right from the loggers …

Gumberoo Anatomy

Loggers described the Gumberoo as roughly bear-sized, but with:

• Coal-black, hairless skin that shines “like rubber or wet leather.”
• A few bristles on the chin and heavy eyebrows.
• An elastic hide that repels anything hurled or shot at it: Cox claimed even bullets bounce off.
• A voracious appetite, capable of swallowing mid-sized animals like ponies, deer and dogs.

I suspect the dark skin color comes from its diet of burned cedar. As for its elastic hide, it might be caused by a dense subdermal fat layer.

Cox also recorded the creature’s one weakness, fire. He wrote that the Gumberoo “burns like celluloid, with explosive force,” and that loggers near Coos Bay, Oregon once smelled “burning rubber” after forest fires.

Possible Natural Explanations

No one has ever recovered any Gumberoo remains for a deeper biological analysis like DNA testing. And now that it’s been over 100 years since the last sighting, we likely won’t get a sample soon.

There are a few natural explanations for the creature. These include:

• Misidentified wildlife: Hairless bears, victims of mange or burns, can appear smooth and shiny, fitting Cox’s description.
• Acoustic phenomena: The “explosions” could be trapped gases from decomposing vegetation or chemical pockets in cedar stumps igniting during fires.
• Loggers’ imagination: Lumberjacks may have let their minds run wild during wildfire outbreaks … and simply imagined the monster.

Habitat & Range

From the Olympic Peninsula to Humboldt, California, the Gumberoo has a long range, but its habitat is limited. This creature needs to hug the coastline with cool fogs, damp soil and western red cedar thrives. It makes me think the monster needs some sort of moisture (or high humidity) for its skin.

The Gumberoo also needs to eat burnt cedar trees. Now, this is actually commonly found along the Pacific Northwest coast. In the summer, it rarely rains, so wildfires frequently happen. Those burnt tree oases lure the Gumberoo.

From the clues in lumberjack reports, and Cox’s and Tryon’s writing, it’s likely the monster would inhabit old burned cedar hollows for a den. Coastal fogs would help conceal its movement from predators, and the coastal rainforests would have an ample supply of burnt wood, animals and carrion for food.

Closing Reflection

We may never see the Gumberoo roaming the Cascadian coastal forests again. For one, human populations have taken over the territory, and a Gumberoo needs a lot of space. Logging also reduced its habitat, and wildfires have become a larger threat to both humans and the beast. Fire is the biggest threat to monster. Perhaps they’ve moved farther north into Canada?

The PSMC will continue to track sightings of the Gumberoo. But we haven’t had a verifiable report since 1910.

Sources & Further Reading

Cox, William T. (1910). Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods. Minneapolis: Press of the American Forestry Association. Full text online via lib.lumberwoods.org

Tryon, Henry H. (1939). Fearsome Critters. Stephen Greene Press.

Washington State Historical Society, Logging Folklore Collections (archival summaries).

“Fearsome Critters.” Encyclopedia of American Folklore. ABC-CLIO, 2006.

Scientific Reference Note

This section shows biochemical data about animal oils and combustion:

• Squalene: A natural hydrocarbon (C₃₀H₅₀) found in the livers of sharks, whales, and certain deep-sea fish. It’s a highly flammable oil with a flash point around 240 °C (464 °F).
  • Source: Reddy, C. M. et al., Marine Chemistry, 2000.
• Combustion of Animal Fats: Animal triglycerides oxidize rapidly when heated beyond ~370 °C, producing volatile fatty acids that can ignite explosively when vaporized.
  • Source: P. H. Smith, Journal of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry, 1920.
• Whale & Seal Blubber as Fuel: Indigenous Arctic communities historically used blubber as lamp oil because of its sustained, high-energy flame.
  • Source: E. Nelson, The Eskimo About Bering Strait, 1900.
• Gas Expansion in Decomposition: Whale carcasses have been documented exploding due to trapped methane and hydrogen sulfide gases. Similar chemistry could occur under intense heat.
  • Source: K. W. Smith, Marine Mammal Science, 1995.

Together, these studies show how an animal with a thick oily blubber layer could, under extreme heat, ignite violently. This might make Gumberoo’s fiery demise chemically plausible, if not yet proven.

Side note: The Gumberoo might look like a hairless bear, but maybe it’s more closely related to a seal or walrus. After all, those critters evolved from land animals to aquatic mammals. Maybe the reverse is also true?

UPDATE: A Plausible Link To Desmostylia

If the Gumberoo has an ancestor in the fossil record, look no further than the Desmostylians, ancient marine mammals that once roamed the Pacific Rim from Japan to California, including the coasts of Washington and British Columbia.

These heavy, hippo-like herbivores lived 30 to 10 million years ago, feeding on sea grasses and kelp near coastal estuaries. Fossil beds along the Olympic Peninsula and in Oregon show they had barrel-shaped torsos, short limbs, and thick, oily hides, likely to keep their skin from drying out when hauling onto shore.

In many ways, they fit the Gumberoo legend’s physical blueprint: massive, round-bodied, nearly hairless, and built for both water and land. If a remnant population survived past the Miocene and adapted to the cool rainforests of Cascadia, the result might look a lot like the creature lumberjacks described.

While no fossil evidence places Desmostylians in recent millennia, their presence in the region’s prehistory offers a fascinating evolutionary “what if” for anyone tracing the Gumberoo’s lineage.

Sources: Barnes, L.G. (2013) Desmostylians: The Oddest of the Marine Mammals, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Beatty, B.L. & Cockburn, T.C. (2015) Paleobiology of Desmostylians, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

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Thanks for reading PSMC’s entry on the Gumberoo. If you’ve encountered a strange beast like this along the coastal forests, let us know in the comments below.