Although it has been 100 years since an incident near Mount St. Helens dubbed the “Ape Canyon attack,” when miners from Kelso were purportedly bombarded by rocks thrown at their small cabin by a group of ape-like creatures, the story remains a prominent fixture in Sasquatch lore.
The anniversary serves as a reminder of how storytelling shapes local communities.
Picture this: a group of miners huddled in a small cabin on the southeast side of Mount St. Helens. Their guns fire wildly at a group of ape-like creatures — or Sasquatch, if you will — who are throwing rocks at the cabin, climbing on its roof and trying to bust down the door.
This scene was burned into the mind of 8-year-old Marc Myrsell, who saw a reenactment of the alleged July 1924 event in a movie titled “Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot.”
“That image always stuck with me,” Myrsell said. “It really terrified me at the time.”
It wasn’t until Myrsell came across the book “Three Men Seeking Monsters” by Nick Redfern in the early 2000s that his deep dive into cryptozoology began.
“It became somewhat of a midlife crisis for me around 2004 to 2009,” Myrsell said.
He has been researching and developing his body of work regarding Ape Canyon since then.
“Ape Canyon has been a project I've been living and breathing for a long time,” Myrsell said.
In his pursuit for the truth behind the events that occurred at Ape Canyon, he went where he needed to: newspaper archives, libraries, local historical societies and courthouses.
According to Myrsell, there was a dearth of information when the supposed attack happened; however, The Daily News of Longview published an article within two days of the attack.
“It hit the newspapers hard,” he said.
Word spread across the Western states quickly, and the notorious attack became a permanent fixture in Pacific Northwest Sasquatch lore.
Myrsell was also able to get in contact with descendants of the miners who were said to have experienced the attack.
Betty Mitchell, daughter of one of the miners, Leroy Smith, knew of the Ape Canyon story but had no idea her father was tied to it.
According to Myrsell, Leroy Smith was quoted saying he didn’t want to have anything to do with what he shot at again.
“Leroy said he never wanted to talk about it again, and he was very spooked,” Myrsell said.
“Something profound scared these guys off their claim. They were very adept in the woods and had seen and heard almost everything you could see or hear,” Myrsell said.
Not only were the miners seasoned woodsmen, but their mine was also apparently very lucrative, according to Myrsell, and reached 75 feet when it was actively being used.
According to Myrsell, another miner present named Marrion Smith said that he didn’t care how much gold was in the mine following the attack.
After the miners abandoned their cabin the morning after the attack, Myrsell said only a few of them ever returned to the site and, when they did, they were accompanied by forest rangers.
The cabin, abandoned after the alleged attack, was believed to have been lost.
Fred Beck, another one of the miners who experienced the attack, wrote a book in which he noted that he believed the cabin burned down.
Myrsell wasn’t convinced.
Using the skills he acquired working as a private land surveyor, a photo taken of the cabin and some information from a forest ranger, Myrsell started searching for the lost cabin.
The forest ranger had told him that the area had never been commercially logged and that the historic eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 hadn't affected the leeward side of the mountain where the miners had said their cabin once stood. In the photo of the cabin, stumps were visible where the miners had cut down the trees to construct it.
Myrsell searched for the cabin for some time but to no avail. He knew that he was looking for an area with old growth trees and some stumps on the leeward side of the mountain. If he found stumps, he was getting close, but the stumps eluded him.
During his search for the site, Myrsell and a few friends who were accompanying him heard very strange noises along the ridge of Ape Canyon one night, he said.
“It went on all night, and it was something I’d never heard before,” Myrsell said.
“It sounded like four or five individuals chattering and speaking gibberish with each other along the ridge,” he said.
A few of Myrsell’s friends also got lost down a glacial trail and found a track that was good enough to cast with a heel and “four or five definite toes,” he said. The track is under scrutiny as being either a hominid or a double-stepping bear.
Still, the location of the cabin was a mystery — until one day in 2013. He and some of his friends went up to look around and found rotting stumps. They broke out a metal detector and located the foundation of the cabin as well as leftover nails, a bucksaw, baling wire and bullet casings from a 30-30 rifle.
The bullet casing is especially important to Myrsell’s case because it matches the caliber of a gun that one of the miners had while living at the cabin. Myrsell has photographic evidence of the gun’s presence at the cabin and stated the casing was found inside the perimeter of the foundation.
The mine itself was discovered last August by Betty Mitchell’s grandsons. Using directions from Myrsell, Braden, Jarod and Jake Mitchell visited the possible site of their great-grandfather's cabin. While they were there, they continued to explore the area and went further than Myrsell had ventured.
“When Braden called, I was a little incredulous,” Myrsell said of the grandsons finding the mine. “I’m glad they found the mine because it's their family’s story.”
Along with more modern cases such as the Ape Canyon incident, there is also a rich history of Bigfoot lore that comes from the surrounding indigenous tribes.
Figures that resemble large primates have been woven into baskets and carved into rocks along the Columbia River. Many West Coast tribes tell stories of large, hairy wild men who stood taller than 7 feet.
The historic and physical evidence Myrsell has uncovered has led him to believe that something dramatic and traumatic had to have happened to force the miners to abandon their successful mine. Not only that, but none of the miners recanted their stories before they died.
While some may remain skeptical, Myrsell firmly believes that the evidence he has collected is substantial enough.
“This is a legitimate phenomenon,” Myrsell said. “At first, when I got into the Bigfoot research community, I didn't talk about it because I'm a private land surveyor. I think the more we normalize it the more we can gather stories and evidence.”
Bigfoot may seem far-fetched to some, but the power that gathering stories and local lore has on cultural and community identity is undeniable even 100 years later.
The story of the attack at Ape Canyon is a Pacific Northwest classic. However, it has gone from being just lore to transforming the local area, intertwining with community member’s lives and forming the iconic history of Bigfoot that Washington is recognized for today.
Myrsell is a member of the Olympic Project, which is dedicated to researching Sasquatch.
For more information on Myrsell and local Bigfoot expeditions, visit olympicproject.com.
