Media Article # 86
Article submitted by Ron Schaffner

Monday, October 6, 1958

The Province

EUREKA, Calif. (AP) - Jerry Crew, a hard-eyed catskinner who bulldozes logging roads for a living, came to town this weekend with a plaster cast of a footprint.

The footprint looks human, but it is 16 inches long, seven inches wide, and the great weight of the creature that made it sink the print two inches into the dirt.

Crew says an ordinary foot will penetrate that dirt only half an inch.

"I've seen hundreds of these footprints in the past few weeks," said Crew.

He added he made the cast of a print in dirt he had bulldozed Friday in a logging operation in the forests above Weitchpeg, 50 miles north and a bit east of here in the Klamath River country of Northwestern California.

Crew said he and his fellow workmen never have seen the creature, but often have had a sense of being watched as they worked in the tall timber.

BIGFOOT, as the Bluff Creek people call the creature, apparently travels only at night.

Crew said he seems fascinated by logging operations, particularly the earth moving that Crew does with his bulldozer in hacking out new logging trails.

"Every morning we find his footprints in the fresh earth we've moved the day before", Crew said.

CREW SAID Robert Titmus, a taxidermist from Redding, studied the tracks and said they were not made by any known animals.

"And they can't be made by a bear, as there are no claw marks."

"The foot has five stubby toes and the stride averages about 50 inches when he's walking and goes up to ten feet when he's running."

TWO YEARS AGO reports from this area told of logging camp equipment tumbled about, including full 50-gallon drums of gasoline scattered by some unknown agency.

From the files of Ron Schaffner (Ron@bfro.net). Newspaper article about a logging road builder who made a plaster cast of large tracks repeatedly seen near his work site. This article introduced the term "bigfoot" into the American vocabulary. Prior to this article, these creatures were refered to, in that area, as "Sasquatches".

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