Bossburg 'cripple foot' tracks
Between October and December 1969 over a thousand large footprints were found near Bossburg in north-eastern Washington, the right foot apparently deformed.
1969 CE · 48.75, -118.04 · status: disputed
The account
Anthropologist Grover Krantz of Washington State University and primatologist John Napier argued that a faker would not think to invent a believable injured foot. The prints drew most of the era's Bigfoot hunters to the town.
The sceptical view
Local hunter Ivan Marx was closely tied to the find, and his 1970 film of a 'cripple foot' Bigfoot was later shown to be staged; many think the tracks were made too.
The researched reading
A famous trackway whose credibility depends on the man who found it, and he is known to have faked a film. Fabrication is the most likely answer, though the anatomical argument keeps a small door open.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A hoax or fabrication | 62% | Ivan Marx, who was central to the find, later produced a staged "cripple foot" Bigfoot film, and a deformed foot is not hard to carve once one decides to make tracks look "real"; over a thousand prints near one hunter’s base points to manufacture. |
| An unknown or out-of-place animal | 12% | Krantz and Napier argued that the club-foot anatomy was too sophisticated for a faker of the time, which is the strongest argument for a real animal; but no remains, hair with clear DNA or body has been found. |
| A cultural story | 10% | The tracks arrived at the height of Bigfoot fame after the 1967 Patterson film, and the hunters who flocked to Bossburg shaped how every mark was read. |
| Something known, misidentified | 8% | Some prints may have been bear tracks or melted human prints in snow, swept into the count. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 6% | Experts wanting a genuine specimen read anatomical subtlety into casts made by a known showman. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 2% | An unknown primate would be a biological question, not one beyond science. |
Official position: No official investigation; Krantz and Napier considered the tracks genuine, while later researchers widely suspect Marx made them.