Spikehorn and the bear den at the Harrison crossroads

A sign at the corner of Old US-27 and M-61 in Harrison once made a promise few roadside attractions could match: this was the only bear den in the world where you could shake hands with a bear. The man behind it was John Meyer, known to everyone as Spikehorn for the deer-antler look of his long white beard, and from the early 1930s into the 1950s his wildlife park drew carloads of travelers off the highway.

The draw was the bears. Spikehorn raised black bears from cubs, and they wandered his wooded camp of log cabins and pens like big, shaggy dogs. Tourists posed with them, fed them, and now and then got more bear than they bargained for — there were a few well-publicized scratches and one frightening incident with a child. Spikehorn kept deer and other animals too, but it was always the bears people drove out to see.

He was a born showman with a grievance streak. Spikehorn hauled live bears down to Lansing to lobby lawmakers, ran for state representative three times in the 1940s on a platform that included abolishing the property tax, and feuded loudly with game wardens over who could keep wild animals. Voters never sent him to the capitol, but his stunts kept his name in the papers for years.

A wood stove sparked a fire that gutted his souvenir shop in 1957. He rebuilt and reopened, then a stroke left him unable to care for the animals, and he died in 1959 at 89. The bears are long gone and the buildings have crumbled back into the trees, but locals can still point you to the crossroads where a bearded old man once talked you into shaking paws with a black bear.