The Dalles "Overgrown Ape" Sightings at Pinewood Mobile Manor

Crate's Point sits on the west edge of The Dalles, in Wasco County, Oregon. In 1971 a trailer park stood there. Pinewood Mobile Manor, also called Pinewood Trailer Court, with an open meadow beside it.

Early June 1971. Joe Mederios, the park's maintenance man, was alone when the figure appeared. A shaggy, gray shape. At least ten feet tall. An oval face, and a crest or dorsal ridge along the top of its head. Mederios reported nothing, for fear of being "called a nut."

The next day, around noon, Mederios was in a trailer office fronting the meadow, in discussions with three businessmen. Through the window, there it was again. An erect, ape-like figure. "About ten feet tall, greyish in color, with real wide shoulders and arms that hung way down." It was not a bear. It was walking upright. It "looked like an overgrown ape."

Rich Brown taught music at the high school. One night, Brown and his wife were returning from choir practice when the creature appeared in their car's headlights. It froze and stared into the lights. Sixty-five yards away.

Brown sprinted for the trailer and came back with a Winchester .30-06 with a four-power scope. The crosshairs settled squarely between the creature's expressionless flat black eyes. The safety came off. Then nothing. "I couldn't shoot it, because it looked more human than animal." Most retellings give those words to Brown, though at least one credits Mederios.

The witnesses filed a report with the Wasco County Sheriff's Office. Sheriff Ernie Mosier found the men credible. Deputy Richard Carlson went out to investigate one of the reported sightings and took the statement from Mederios. Donna Robertson, widow of Deputy Jack Robertson, later recalled the mood inside the office. "It was the top priority, I think."

The sheriff's own staff had stories too. The jailor, Oliver Potter, was fishing on the Wind River early one Saturday morning. "The thing walked right out on the bank, looked at him and stood there." Harry Gilpin reported a sighting as well. Neither can be tied firmly to 1971. No formal finding was ever issued, and no tracks, hair, photographs or film are known from Pinewood.

The obvious answer was a bear. The witness had already ruled it out. No sceptic has published an analysis of this case, and no hoax claim has surfaced. The accounts do disagree on size. Mederios said ten feet. The Bigfoot Casebook, by Janet and Colin Bord, describes an "8-ft, silvery-gray Bigfoot seen on several occasions by groups of witnesses."

The Crate's Point sightings are said to have drawn famed Bigfoot seeker Peter Byrne to The Dalles, where a World Bigfoot Center took shape. The timeline is murky. One local account dates Byrne's exhibition from 1970. In 1976 Byrne sent hair samples from the center to the FBI. The 1977 verdict: deer family origin. Those samples had nothing to do with Pinewood.

Tim Cahill carried the story to a national audience in Rolling Stone on May 10, 1973. Today a single sentence in Wikipedia's Bigfoot article keeps it alive. An overgrown ape. A rifle scope. And a trigger that was never pulled.