 Starting in 1893, he drew illustrations of a cute bear cub for the paper, originally to accompany the paper's coverage of the San Francisco Mid-Winter Exposition of 1894.After the fair, Swinnerton continued to draw bear cartoons to appear with the weather forecast.The bears became popular enough that Swinnerton created a regular feature, "The Little Bears", that began on June 2, 1895 and continued through June 7, 1897.