Media Article # 153
Article submitted by Richard Noll

Tuesday, January 27, 1976

Footprints of 'Bigfoot' reported

Lewiston Tribune

NORTH BEND, Wash. -

Jim French says he was skeptical of reports about Bigfoot, the Northwest's legendary ape-man, until he and a companion discovered 18-inch long footprints Sunday in a river sandbank.

"I always believed it was a bunch of bunk," French, 38, said Monday after he and Joseph Langston, 33, found the four-toed, 8 1/2-inch wide indentions near the south fork of the Snoqualmie River.

French estimated the creature weighed about 400 pounds because of the depth of its prints in the sand when compared with his own. French said he weighs about 180.

The animal's size has not been verified by the scientific community, however.

French said he made five plaster casts of the footprints and he and Langston found hair on some tree limbs along the creature's path.

The hair was found about five or six feet off the ground, he said.

French said he intended to contact University of Washington scientists and let them analyze his findings.

His first reaction Sunday, French said, was that the prints were a hoax.

"I could not believe what I saw," said the veteran outdoorsman. "There was no evidence of any four-footed marks anywhere."

French and Langston consulted three other outdoorsmen. They concluded the prints were authentic.

"No man helped me make those tracks," he said. "Whatever made them, made them by themselves."

French first noted the tracks in hard sand. He could see only the toe marks and thought they were from a club-footed elk.

They tracked the creature for a quarter of a mile before losing it amongst loam and leaves and then pasture land where prints of horses and dogs could be seen.

The creature was moving east to west French said, adding that all the tracks matched the terrain.

Slide marks appeared when the animal was going downhill and deep indentations were found when it dug in going up a slope, French said. The stride lengthened when it loped across flat ground.

French, a self-employed subcontractor, and Langston, a lumbermill employe, were using a metal detector to search for items of value along the river when they found the prints.

AP

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