Resurrecting the Story of the Passenger Pigeon in Pennsylvania

Abstract

The passenger pigeon was the most impressive species of bird that man has known. Elegant in form and color, swift and graceful of flight, it moved about and nested in such enormous numbers as to confound the senses. —A. W. Schorger, The Passenger Pigeon and Its Extinction (1955) Only a handful of centenarians can recall the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, but generations of school-children know that the incident launched World War I. Two months later, in September of that year, another notable death occurred. Martha, the world’s last remaining passenger pigeon, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. Martha’s remains, accompanied by a sign reading “EXTINCT” in large block letters, graced the bird exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution for almost eighty years. Martha’s death received considerably less attention than the archduke’s. Her death marked the formal extinction of the passenger pigeon, but the critical years for the species were the 1860s to the 1880s, when Americans slaughtered them by the millions.