The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here today and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced.
- Report from a select committee of the Ohio Senate in 1857 on a bill proposed to protect the Passenger Pigeon. The last known representative of the species -- named Martha -- died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914.  
       
This Passenger Pigeon was caught in Wayne County Indiana in 1869.  The drop in their population was well under way by the 1850's.  This mount is on display at the Indiana State Museum, 650 West Washington Street in Indianapolis.


 




 
Photo by Marty Jones.