Blue Creek Mountain Bigfoot tracks: the trackway that led to the Patterson-Gimlin film (1967)

Late August 1967. John Green, a journalist from Agassiz, B.C., and Bigfoot hunter René Dahinden had just investigated footprints at Onion Mountain in northern California and gone home. Less than 24 hours later, road contractor Bud Ryerson called Green "on a radio phone of some sort." The date was 28 August 1967. On the Blue Creek Mountain road, then under construction in Six Rivers National Forest, there were fresh tracks. They were reported to have been left the night before.

Green and Dahinden flew into the Orleans airstrip and were driven to the site. "There had been three individuals walk down the road, according to Ryerson," Green later wrote to Bob Titmus. The prints ran down the road about 125 yards. Then they followed the ridge past the old lookout on Blue Creek Mountain for about a mile, and came back onto the road for 500 yards. More turned up below Onion Lake. The largest track was 15 inches, with a split in the ball of the foot, like the one Titmus had cast on a sandbar. Another was 13 inches, with "no remarkable peculiarities." A smaller set is given as 12 inches in one account and 10.5 inches in another. Green put the total at close to 600.

Dale Moffit brought a tracking dog named White Lady. He insisted on two rifles for protection. "The dog wanted to follow them and seemed very excited, but the handler would not." It lost the scent after a couple of hundred yards. The next morning it showed no excitement.

On Wednesday night, archaeologist Don Abbott of the British Columbia Provincial Museum arrived. He examined the tracks on Thursday. Green's report was short. "He was convinced." A team of five from Humboldt State came on the Friday. Green took still photographs. Dahinden shot 16 mm movie film of the tracks, the dog search and the investigators.

The road work went on. A grader took out most of the tracks, "including three we had worked half a day trying to soak in glue and make a cast of the actual ground." Green regretted they had not got "as good casts as we should have." Later, back in British Columbia, a roll of his photographs was ruined when Abbott's son opened it.

But the news had already travelled. Al Hodgson, owner of the Willow Creek Variety Store, passed it to Roger Patterson through Patterson's wife. About seven weeks later, on 20 October 1967, the Patterson-Gimlin film was shot at Bluff Creek.

No Forest Service, sheriff or government inquiry followed. Sceptics point to Ray Wallace, the Bluff Creek road-building contractor whose family said after his death in November 2002 that he was behind the 1958 Jerry Crew tracks. Bigfoot's Blog argues the Blue Creek Mountain impressions and casts "appear to be perfect matches" for Wallace's wooden footprint stompers. Critics also point to the stiff and uniform impressions in the 1967 photographs.

Defenders answer back. A credentialed scientist was convinced. A dog reacted strongly. The trackway left the road for about a mile along a ridge, which they cite against a simple roadside stomping. Bill Miller argues Green and Dahinden acted reasonably, flying in at once to put a dog on a fresh trail. The case remains disputed.

Green told the story in On the Track of the Sasquatch (1968). Dahinden had first visited Blue Creek Mountain in 1959, and kept going back. In 1993 he filmed the site again, 26 years on, finding a cement building and a burnt cabin. The tracks were long gone. Nobody ever saw what made them. But they pointed Roger Patterson toward Bluff Creek.