---
title: "When did the last passenger pigeon die?"
description: "Martha, at Cincinnati Zoo, 1 September 1914. What happened, why it has not happened since, and whether it plausibly could again."
url: https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/passenger-pigeon/
site: "At One Place"
---

# When did the last passenger pigeon die?

**When did the last passenger pigeon die?: 1 September 1914**

Martha, at Cincinnati Zoo

The passenger pigeon had been the most numerous bird in North America and possibly on Earth, with flocks estimated in the billions that took days to pass overhead. It went from that to extinct within about fifty years, through commercial hunting and habitat loss. Martha's body was frozen into a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian, where she remains.

- **What:** Martha, at Cincinnati Zoo
- **When:** 1 September 1914
- **Category:** The natural world
- **Could this change?:** Not in any foreseeable way. The event is closed.

## The natural world

| Question | When |
| --- | --- |
| When did Vesuvius last erupt? | March 1944 |
| When did the last thylacine die? | 7 September 1936 |
| When did the last ice age end? | About 11,700 years ago |
| When did the Earth's magnetic poles last reverse? | About 780,000 years ago |

> This page gives a date and never a "years ago". These pages are built as static files, so a computed interval would freeze at build time and quietly become wrong — which on a reference site is worse than making the reader do the subtraction.

## Common questions

### When did the last passenger pigeon die?

1 September 1914 — Martha, at Cincinnati Zoo.

### What happened?

The passenger pigeon had been the most numerous bird in North America and possibly on Earth, with flocks estimated in the billions that took days to pass overhead. It went from that to extinct within about fifty years, through commercial hunting and habitat loss. Martha's body was frozen into a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian, where she remains.

## Related pages

- [When did Vesuvius last erupt?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/vesuvius/)
- [When did the last thylacine die?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/thylacine/)
- [When did the last ice age end?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/ice-age/)
- [When did the Earth's magnetic poles last reverse?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/magnetic-reversal/)
- [When did the last thylacine die?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/thylacine/)
- [When did a European country last change calendar?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/calendar-change/)
- [When was a leap year last skipped?](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/leap-year-skipped/)
- [Everything, most recent first](https://atoneplace.net/the-last-time/)

## Sources

- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution (https://naturalhistory.si.edu/)