The Bossburg Cripplefoot trackway

Bossburg is a ghost town on the east bank of the Columbia River, just south of the Canadian border. In 1892 it was a silver and lead mining town of about 800 people, then called "Young America." In 1896 it took the name of its first citizen, C. S. Boss. Two years before these tracks, Roger Patterson's Bigfoot film had been shot at Bluff Creek. Patterson himself would later come to Bossburg.

November 24, 1969. Joe Rhodes of Colville was disposing of trash near the Bossburg community garbage dump. There, in the ground, were footprints. Huge ones. The right foot was twisted out of shape.

René Dahinden arrived on November 27. Sightseers had already trampled most of the prints. He cast the best one he could find.

Then came Saturday, December 13. Dahinden and Bossburg resident Ivan Marx found a new line of tracks in the snow near Lake Roosevelt, close to a meat lure, and counted 1,089 prints. The trail came from near the Columbia River, crossed the railroad and the main highway, and went over a 43-inch wire fence. It crossed flatland and climbed halfway up a hill. Then it doubled back and disappeared into the river.

The left foot measured about 17 inches. The right was slightly smaller. The field report by Dahinden and a co-author named Jones described a missing third toe, a little toe jutting at a sharp angle, and a foot curving outward with two bumps along its outer edge. The stride ran from 43 to 57 inches.

Eight hairs were collected. Three went to Edmonton. No result is known. Border Patrol, Highway Patrol and the Northport sheriffs came to see. Dahinden looked at the line seven times and found no indication of fake. "I think these tracks were made by a Sasquatch," he wrote.

John Napier, former Smithsonian Curator of Primates, studied the casts and photographs and diagnosed club-foot, probably from an injury in early childhood. "Either some of the footprints are real, or all are fakes," he concluded. Grover Krantz, the Washington State University anthropologist, went further, arguing that any hoaxer would have to be a real genius, an expert at anatomy. Such a person was impossible, he argued, so the tracks were real. Later, Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University proposed pes cavus or skewfoot instead of clubfoot, probably from a spinal lesion, while David Howe suggested a healed Lisfranc injury.

January 1970. Prospector Joe Metlow claimed to have a live Sasquatch in a mine shaft. Bidding reached $55,000. He never let anyone see it. Then he claimed a Sasquatch foot in his freezer, and backed out again. The researchers concluded they had been deceived.

October 1970. Marx phoned Dahinden and said he had filmed the cripple. A bidding war followed. Peter Byrne, then paying Marx a $750-a-month retainer, followed up on children who recognised the location as the edge of their own ranch. The site did not fit Marx's account. Marx left town, and a safety-deposit box said to hold the film contained only a Mickey Mouse cartoon reel.

Shortly before the December 13 trackway, Marx had stopped and got out of the vehicle, just after they passed an empty Jeep. Sceptics also suggest custom shoes, modified footwear or melting snow. Dahinden still accepted the tracks as genuine. Krantz's copies of the casts went to UC Berkeley's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, which displayed them on Darwin Day 2008. Cripplefoot has never been explained.