Portland Oregon 2007
Submitted by Claudia King

After 35 years in Portland, OR, I moved in late 2006 to Springdale, WA, less than an hour northwest of Spokane.  It is a tiny but incorporated town of 311, up form the when I moved there in my late 50s to do planning and grant writing for the Spokane Tribe on their reservation.  I worked in the tribal office headquarters in Wellpinit, WA.  

In the summer of 2007, I was driving home from work and had left the reservation to turn north toward Springdale.  Within a few miles on that County Road No. 231, i spotted something dark moving down the mostly open grassy slope from the highway on the passenger side.  On the driver's side there were trees, mostly pines, in a fairly heavily wooded area.  I did not stop but slowed as much a I could because there were no cars behind me.  

My first thought was that it looked like the top of a sloth I had seen many years previously in my son's book about the alphabet; sloth was shown for the letter"s."  But its legs were not right for that and neither was its hair,  It was heading downhill and I estimate it was between three and four feet tall.  I was looking down on top of it as it headed away down the slope and did not see its face.  I thought there was water over there because there was a small camping area close by but was not certain.  That it might be a Bigfoot did not enter my mind at the time.  But it was not a small bear.  I saw no visible ears and no tail.  It had distinct shoulders, a flat human-like back and was an ashy black color with scraggly hair, not really thick, that I estimate was about five inches long. It appeared to be mostly on all fours as it headed downhill but its front "legs"/arms may have been slightly off the ground.  I saw no other creature with it or ahead of it.  

I wondered what I had seen and reported it to some co-workers the next day at work.  The response was mostly a, "Huh."  Over time, I asked about Bigfoot sightings on the reservation, very plentiful with deer and other wildlife, and was told there had been some, mostly in more remote areas.  I occasionally visited such areas on short trips as part of a committee that did environmental reviews of various proposals. I saw elk, deer and a moose but nothing else.  

i was very open to the belief that Sasquatch existed from my time living in Oregon but knew no one who had encountered one.  It was some years later after my Washington sighting that I decided that there was nothing else the animal I saw south of Springdale could have been.  During the dozen years I lived in the Springdale area, I heard occasionally of a sighting in the broader Spokane area and eventually became friends with a Ute Indian grandmother who was raising her six grandchildren.  She and one of her grandsons shared that they had seen a large Sasquatch as they were driving to Springdale on County Road No. 292 from Loon Lake, an unincorporated little town at the intersection of the Interstate north of Spokane and Hwy 292 that heads six miles or so to Springdale.  The Bigfoot they saw was crossing the road near Springdale and had a filled plastic garbage bag over its shoulders.  So they surmised that it had raided a garbage can.  

If, indeed, my sighting was of a small Sasquatch, I am very pleased to have seen it, My lingering question regarding my possible sighting is why I did not see a mother with the juvenile.  From my armchair, I have since become very interested in the subject of Bigfoot and now "keep my eyes peeled" from where I now live near Castle Rock WA.

Claudia King
May 25, 2018


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