A black bear walks through the forest of Shenandoah National Park. NPS/Neal Lewis. The American Black Bear lives throughout much of the continent, including northern Canada and Alaska south into Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Black bears are the only species of bear found in Shenandoah National Park. While there were probably once as many as two million black bears in North America before European colonization, the population declined to a low of 200,000 as a result of habitat destruction and hunting. By the early 1900s, bear populations were nearly eliminated from lands that are now within the park. On the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, the last bear was reported in Albemarle County in 1910. Bear populations persisted however in the Allegheny Mountains to the west, the descendents of which are the most likely source of the current park population.