Sawyers Bar, CA -- "Is Big Foot moving into new territory?"

A Yreka man -- Alan "Timer" Freeman reported some mighty strange footprints in the snow last week a few miles east of this remote Salmon River community, raising speculation that the legendary creature may be passing through or even taking up residence locally.

Big Foot reports have been almost totally non-existent during the 1980s and early 90s, although a man found prints in the mud south of Happy Camp back in the mid-1980s.

But in the past two years, the reports have intensified. At least two "experiences" were known to have happened to campers in the Marble Mountain Wilderness area during the summer of 1992, and last year there was an unsubstantiated sighting near Scott Bar.

Freeman's grown son and two friends were fishing on the Salmon River around the weekend of January 23/24, when they found large tracks in the snow near the North Fork of the Salmon. Besides being large, they had visible toes.

Last Thursday, Freeman went with a retired law enforcement friend to his mining claim and they located the prints, measured, and photographed them.

Freeman said they were 17.5 inches long and took strides ranging from 36 to 41 inches in length. Pretty big for a human being.

(On Friday, the Pioneer Press went to the site and asked the assistance of Chet Mc Broom in looking at the prints, but they were too faded to substantiate their origin and too far gone to see defined toes as Freeman reported and photographed).

Freeman, a retired bridge construction man for the county, said the prints were definitely not those of a bear or mountain lion.

Several persons who track said that prints made in the snow will "grow" in certain conditions during a melt, but Freeman said if that was the case the character of the toes would have been undefined, plus he wondered why someone would be barefoot
in the first place in the middle of winter.

He said before last week he thought any mention of the elusive creature was "someone pulling someone else's leg", but now that he has seen the tracks "I'm beginning to believe in Big Foot".

Freeman is the son of a logger and was a logger himself in younger years and had no previous evidence of "something being out there."

The summer before last a Fort Jones woman was camping near some lakes in the Marbles when she became "aware" of someone or something watching. She said there was a "terrible smell" about 30 feet away, but when she moved, the "smell" stayed about the same distance away. Her dogs, who normally chase all creatures including bear, hovered around her.

Said one person, asking not to be identified, "my personal theory is Big Foot has a sweet tooth for elk meat (recently introduced back in the area), so that's why we haven't had these reports in years."

© Pioneer Press
Wednesday, February 3, 1993 Vol. 21, No. 13
Credit source: Tim Olson

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