The Fort Bragg Bigfoot: the Hatfield and Jenkins house encounter

Fort Bragg sits on the Mendocino County coast of California. In 1962 the Jenkins home stood on the far reaches of the small town, just on the edge of a vast coastal redwood forest. Robert "Bob" Hatfield, a logger from Crescent City, was visiting his sister there. Her husband, Bud Jenkins, owned the house. Four years earlier, giant tracks at Bluff Creek had given the world the name Bigfoot.

Wednesday, February 7, 1962. Around 5:30 in the evening, Hatfield stepped outside. The dogs were barking. Some tellings say howling. In another, Hatfield heard what he thought was a dog howling.

He turned. At the back of the property, a creature stood chest and shoulders above a 6-foot-high fence. "It was much, much bigger than a bear," he said. "It was covered with fur, with a flat, hairless face and perfectly round eyes." He went inside to tell his hosts. The three of them went out to look.

Coming around the side of the house, Hatfield ran straight into the thing. It knocked him to the ground. Then it chased the three of them back into the house. Some accounts say both men struggled with it. Joshua Blu Buhs has Hatfield warning of a "half-man, half-beast" monster.

They tried to shut the door. The creature threw its weight against it, blocking them from closing it. Bud Jenkins went for his gun. "I'm going to shoot the damn thing," he yelled. The monster relented. It fled into the night.

Reports describe footprints in the mud about 16 inches long with one toe missing, and an 11-inch dirty handprint on the side of the house. Sasquatch Canada gives the print as 11.5 inches, traced and compared to a man's hand. According to the North American Bigfoot Center, the tracing was by police and the art by Chuck Edmonds. A more detailed drawing was sent to John Green and surfaced in about 2002.

Neighbours searched the woods. One version says they found no footprints or fur. Another says four men in the hunting party were convinced, pointing to broken branches about a mile from the property, some tracks and some dung.

Sunday, February 18, 1962. The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa ran a $25 reward on its front page. "Stands chest and shoulders above six feet, leaves 16-inch footprints, 11-inch handprints. Subject covered with hair except on face; round-eyes. Believed vegetarian and non-violent, but caution advised."

Otto Hagel, a Life magazine photographer living in Santa Rosa, answered with a footprint of his own. He made it with a large rubber foot from a novelty shop in New York City. The paper shared his scepticism. Hagel turned down the $25. On April 2, 1962, the paper printed his idea of a children's essay contest, won in May by 8-year-old Bill Grami. Hagel showed a print could be made. No source says anyone confessed to faking this one.

No official finding was ever made. The story lives on in Janet and Colin Bord's The Bigfoot Casebook, which credits a report by Charles Edmonds, in Smithsonian magazine, and in classroom magazines that open the tale of Bigfoot at a fence in Fort Bragg.