A tall tale of a small-town law.
This story was originally published in the October 2019 issue of Wonderful West Virginia. To subscribe, visit wonderfulwv.com
Written by Christian M. Giggenbach
Photographed by Nikki Bowman Mills & Christian M. Giggenbach
Politicians across West Virginia have passed many odd laws through the years. Take, for instance, the law stating that anyone who challenges another to a duel with a deadly weapon is prohibited from “holding any office of honor, trust, or profit in this state.” Rumors swirl that at one time it was also illegal to nap on a train and, until 2010, if you wore a hat in a theater you could be fined.
But the account of Alderson town officials passing an ordinance banning all lions from roaming its streets, prompted by the tale of a rescued lion club, could be the most unique of West Virginia’s laws. Perhaps no other Alderson story has been more widely retold and reimagined than this one. It’s the stuff of legends, and through the decades several slightly different versions have emerged. The story dates back 125 years to a time when railroad travel ruled the land and the soot-laden chugging of an iron horse was a familiar and welcome sight to townsfolk.
On one particularly crisp October day in 1890, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway brought to the area a traveling circus known as French’s Great Railroad Show. This type of entertainment was in high demand during the late 1800s and was sure to be a great draw for the 1,200 people who lived in Alderson at the time.
The main attraction of the show was a lioness whose impressive roar did little to conceal the fact she was also pregnant with three cubs. By all accounts, the owners of the circus found themselves in a dilemma. In one version of the story, the circus owners felt the mother lion could not be allowed to nurse the little ones—it would take time away from her moneymaking circus performances. In another version, the owners decide to take the cubs to the Greenbrier River to be drowned, believing, as many did at the time, that all lion cubs born in captivity would eventually succumb to a fatal stomach ailment.
But in any version, they decided to dispose of the newborn cubs during their time in Alderson. Here enters the heroine of the story: Susan Bebout, wife of the town’s blacksmith. When the kind-hearted Bebout discovers the cubs’ intended fate, she and her son George step in. They offer to raise the cubs, and the circus readily hands them over. Two of the cubs quickly die, but the third one lives after, reportedly, being prescribed castor oil by a local doctor. Depending upon which account you hear, the lion cub is named Jimmie, Leo, or French.
As luck would have it, the Bebout family also has a cat at home that has just given birth to a litter of kittens and readily adopts the lion. Over time the two form a close bond. “As the cub grew to robust lionhood, he would take Tabby in his mouth and carry her about, in a gentle imitation of the way she carried her kittens,” reads a 1941 account titled “The Lion and the Pussycat” published in the West Virginia Review. “But, soon all you could see was the cat’s head on one side and the lion’s huge jaws and the hind feet and tail on the other.”
As cats are prone to do, Tabby and the tame lion roamed freely throughout the neighborhoods of Alderson. Children and adults alike played with the lion as it romped through the streets with the freedom its ancestors must have felt on the open plains of Africa.
At first, the majority of the townsfolk appreciated their unusual pet, but as the lion’s girth grew—one story claims he weighed 400 pounds— the appeal began to fade. “After about a year, the good townspeople became alarmed by the large beast running loose and complained to the Bebouts, who promptly erected a high board fence to keep (the lion) in the confines of their yard,” reads a short chapter found in The Rise and Fall of Alderson.
But the fence was no match for the lion. He easily bounded over the barricades in search of his adopted mother Tabby for another of their evening walks. In one story, a traveling salesman was so frightened by the lion that he jumped into the Greenbrier River, vowing never to return to the village again. With public opinion turning against the lion, the Alderson Town Council sprang into action. “The council proclaimed that no lions were to be allowed to run loose on the public streets,” reads The Rise and Fall of Alderson. “(A lion) was to have a collar and be tethered to a leash.”
There is still an ordinance on the books about forbidding lions to run at large and it has never been amended.”
Travis Copenhaven, Mayor of Alderson
The Bebouts ended up selling the lion to the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., for a reported $400 in September of 1891—but not before entering the lion in the Greenbrier County Fair held in Lewisburg and winning a blue ribbon in the livestock show. Several accounts also say Bebout would travel to the zoo in D.C. and astound crowds by walking up to the lion and petting it through the cage. According to another story, the lion was later sold to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
The tale of Alderson’s lion first gained world notoriety because of a snippet from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. “Alderson, West Virginia, has a law: No lions shall be allowed to run large on the streets of the town.” Though most of the documented stories of the Alderson lion contain the Ripley’s quote, an original copy is not among the eight articles referencing the story in the Greenbrier Historical Society archives. But there’s no doubt about the validity of the origin of this story, says Alderson Mayor Travis Copenhaver. Proof can be found inside the town hall. “Oh yes, there is still an ordinance on the books about forbidding lions to run at large and it has never been amended,” he says. “But beyond that, it’s more historical than anything else.”
In 2014, the Alderson Main Street committee purchased three lion statues made of concrete. With the help of town hall workers, one was placed on the banks of the Greenbrier River, across from the visitors’ center, while two more guard the intersection of state routes 63 and 12.
Alderson Main Street committee Treasurer Margaret Hambrick says the idea came from committee member Jim Russell. “We were looking for a way to reinforce the branding of our community, and Jim suggested lion statues in honor of our famous lion.” A fourth lion statue was purchased by former Mayor Luther Lewallen and his wife Judy and placed in a public spot near their home. The statues often can be found wearing makeshift collars or tethered to the ground by ribbons, usually in colors of red, white, and blue for the summer and orange and brown during the fall.
So what of the Alderson lion is fact and what is fiction? It’s all most likely a bit of both, says Greenbrier Historical Society Archivist Jim Talbert. “Because the story begins in 1890, it is ripe for embellishment,” he says. “But the root of the story—about a lion and the ordinance—has stood the test of time and is true. It’s a heartwarming and wonderful story.”