“Buckskin Bill” Hart

Sun., Aug. 7, 1994

A college graduate with a degree in English, Sylvan “Buckskin Bill” Hart drifted north from Oklahoma, and decided to ride out the Depression at Five Mile Bar on the Salmon River in 1932. There, he found natural resources to defeat the poverty brought on by record unemployment. Hart left the canyon to work for Boeing in Wichita, Kan., during WWII, but returned after the war and lived there until his death in 1980.

Made famous by articles about him in Sports Illustrated and a book called “The Last of the Mountain Men,” Hart traveled widely, appearing on television shows and giving talks as far away as Russia and Iceland.

Neighbors considered him a fake, but the media gobbled up and reprinted his homespun philosophizing and made great use of his outlandish buckskin-and-helmet outfits.

“If you look out your window and see a house, you’re a poor man; if you look out and see a lot of houses, you’re a very poor man; if you can’t see any at all, you’re all right,” he told one interviewer.

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