Bigfoot lore alive in Estacada area

Long history of alleged encounters in Estacada

By Vanessa Van Voorhis

The Estacada News, Oct 1, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

This chainsaw-carved Bigfoot stands outside Mike's Secondhand Store, but it's not the only sighting in Estacada history.

Vanessa Van Voorhis / Estacada News

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While hiking along the snowy banks of the Clackamas River late one January afternoon in 1969, Millie Kiggins of Estacada, her husband and their friend Art Schneider found something that would thrust the Kigginses and the quiet wilderness surrounding Estacada into an international spotlight.

“We went to look at a Forest Service cabin up above Squaw Lake on the way to Cold Springs about 20 miles from Estacada,” Kiggins said. “They were going to sell them, and we wanted to look at them. We started out late, and we were in about three feet of snow. There was a gate, and we couldn’t get through. So we started to walk, and it looked like somebody had already gotten through, because there were tracks in the snow.”

They noticed the large size of the tracks and their depth. “They were 18 inches deep”, she said. “Whatever had made them was heavy, because ours were a couple inches deep. It had to have been walking on two feet…and its stride was 67 inches.”

The path of the tracks was in an unusually straight line, too straight to be man-made footprints, she said. The hikers followed the imprints for about a quarter mile before they realized it was getting late and decided to turn back. Before leaving, Kiggins documented their discovery with a photograph and contacted the U.S. Forest Service.

“They said it was a snowshoe rabbit. I have no idea what it was, but if it was a rabbit, it would have to be a big one to make prints that big. I told him if it was a snowshoe rabbit they had better look out, because it’s big enough to eat them,” she said.

Back at home on their farm on the outskirts of Estacada, the Kigginses began to experience a series of Bigfoot-like phenomena.

“He was around here for a year,” she said. “We found footprints all over the farm. Once, they led to a five-foot fence and continued on the other side uninterrupted as if he stepped right over it.

“Sometimes we would smell him. Smelled like a bad nursing home. We heard loud screams and grunts all at once lasting 10 or 15 seconds. It could be heard miles away. The hair on the back of your neck would stand up. It spooked the cattle.”

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