Bigfoot in North America
A Brief History of Bigfoot in America
Pre 1800s: For centuries Native-Americans have had a legend of creature that stands between the human and animal worlds. The legend of large bipedal creatures exist in the folklore of almost all cultures.
1830s: European settlers report seeing large, hairy bipedal creatures in the Pacific northwest. They learn from the Native-Americans the word “Sasquatch” which means “hairy giants”.
July 16, 1924: The Battle of Ape Canyon, Miners claimed that gorilla-like creatures attacked them in the woods near Mt. St. Helens. The miners retreated from what they called "mountain devils” into a log cabin, but their attackers threw rocks down onto them throughout the night. Ape Canyon is named for the incident. One of the miners, Fred Beck, wrote an account of the incident titled I Fought the Apemen of Mt. St. Helens.
August 27, 1958: The Birth of the name "Bigfoot", While working on a construction site in northwest California, tractor operator, Jerry Crew found a series of massive, 16-inch footprints tracked through the mud. Due to the size of the prints, the media began referring to the creature that created the tracts as "Bigfoot." The name stuck, eventually replacing Sasquatch in popular culture as the name for North America's legendary ape-man.
October 20, 1967: The Patterson - Gimlin Film, Roger Patterson and Robert “Bob” Gimlin film an unidentified bipedal creature at Bluff Creek near Orleans California. They also cast prints (C11) left by the creature. Frame 352 (P11) is the most famous image of a “Bigfoot” to date.
December 6, 1972: The Legend of Boggy Creek, The first film of Charles B. Pierce who begins a career making films based on actual events. The Legend of Boggy Creek is a horror docudrama about the “Fouke Monster”, a bipedal creature that has been seen in and around Fouke Arkansas since the 1950s.
1995: The Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO) is formed. An online network for the recording and cataloging of bigfoot sightings.
November 24, 2012 Nacogdoches, Texas: A team of scientist led by Dr Melba S Ketchum, verify with a 5-year long DNA study the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species from DNA samples collected at the location of bigfoot sightings.