The Earliest Recorded Bigfoot Track (1811)

Who Was David Thompson?

David Thompson (1770–1857) was a surveyor, cartographer, fur trader, and explorer who spent decades mapping enormous portions of western North America. He worked first for the Hudson's Bay Company and later for the North West Company, traveling through territory that now lies within Canada and the United States.

His relevance to this story goes beyond name recognition. Thompson kept journals as part of his work. His records documented routes, geography, weather, distances, wildlife, trade, and the conditions encountered during his travels.

That makes the 1811 track account unusual within cryptid history. Thompson was not collecting monster stories or trying to prove that an unknown creature existed. He was documenting something he encountered during a difficult winter journey through the Rockies.

The January 1811 Discovery

During the winter of 1810–1811, Thompson was searching for another route across the Rocky Mountains after his previous passage through Howse Pass became unavailable. His party traveled north along the Athabasca River and eventually crossed the Continental Divide through Athabasca Pass.

On January 7, while continuing the journey, Thompson's party encountered the track of a large animal in roughly six inches of snow.

Thompson did something particularly useful for anyone examining the story more than two centuries later: he measured it.

The track was approximately 14 inches long and 8 inches wide. He described four large toes, each several inches long, with a small nail or short claw at the end. The ball of the foot had sunk noticeably deeper into the snow than the toes, while the rear portion of the footprint had not registered clearly.

The party could see the animal's track continuing for some distance, but they did not pursue it.

That is essentially the foundation of the entire mystery: one unusually large footprint documented by a surveyor who attempted to describe exactly what he saw.

What David Thompson Actually Recorded

The most important source for the incident is Thompson himself.

His surviving writings describe an animal track measuring roughly 14 by 8 inches, with four large toes and short claws. He compared its overall appearance to a bear track but noted features that made the identification uncertain.

Thompson later revisited the event while preparing the longer account of his travels eventually published as David Thompson's Narrative of His Explorations in Western America, 1784–1812.

The expanded version contains additional context. Thompson wrote that the snow allowed the track to be seen clearly and that the animal had been moving from north to south. His companions believed the print belonged to a young mammoth. Thompson disagreed.

His preferred explanation was a very large, old grizzly bear whose claws had worn down.

Even then, he acknowledged that the short claws, unusual impression of the ball of the foot, and great size did not fit an ordinary bear track neatly.

That uncertainty is the real historical story. Thompson saw something unusual, recorded its dimensions, compared it with an animal he knew, and still found parts of the print difficult to reconcile with his explanation.

The Mammoth Theory

Thompson was not traveling alone, and his companions apparently had a far more extraordinary explanation.

They believed the track belonged to a young mammoth.

That sounds bizarre today, but the idea needs to be understood in its historical context. During the early nineteenth century, extinction was still a relatively new scientific concept, and Europeans and Americans were continuing to discover the fossil remains of enormous prehistoric animals across North America.

Some prominent thinkers had entertained the possibility that mammoths or similar animals might survive somewhere in the continent's vast and poorly explored interior.

Against that background, encountering an enormous unfamiliar track in the Canadian Rockies could lead experienced travelers to speculate about an animal that modern observers would immediately rule out.

Thompson, however, did rule it out. He remained much more interested in finding an explanation involving a known animal.

Thompson's Own Skepticism

The most interesting skeptic in the entire story may be David Thompson himself.

He did not interpret the footprint as proof that an unknown giant animal inhabited the Rockies. Instead, he argued that it most likely came from an exceptionally large old grizzly bear.

His explanation centered partly on the claws. If an old bear had heavily worn claws, Thompson reasoned, the resulting print might look different from the tracks his party normally encountered.

Yet he did not pretend the match was perfect.

Thompson specifically noted features that continued to bother him, including the shortness of the claw marks, the impression made by the ball of the foot, and the overall size of the track.

This is one reason the incident has remained interesting. The original witness did not leap to an extraordinary conclusion. He proposed an ordinary animal while preserving the details that made him uncertain.

"Large Unknown Animals" on the Mountain

The story acquired another layer later in 1811.

When Thompson traveled through the region again, he recorded a secondhand story concerning large animals supposedly living around a mountain lake. The animals were described as feeding on vegetation such as roots or moss.

This was not another sighting by Thompson.

That distinction is important. He was recording information told to him rather than documenting an animal he had personally encountered. The story therefore belongs in a different category of evidence from the measured January footprint.

Later Bigfoot writers have sometimes placed the two pieces together: the unusually large track in January and the later report of large unknown animals in the surrounding mountains.

They are historically connected because Thompson recorded both, but the surviving evidence does not establish that they referred to the same animal.

How This Became Bigfoot Lore

Nothing in Thompson's account identifies the animal as Sasquatch.

The connection came much later.

Thompson's writings eventually became available to historians and researchers, including through published editions of his journals and Narrative. By the twentieth century, researchers interested in reports of large unidentified primates began searching older historical records for encounters that appeared similar to modern Sasquatch stories.

The 1811 footprint was an obvious candidate.

It was very large. It was documented by a known explorer. It came from a remote mountain environment. Experienced travelers apparently found it unusual. And Thompson's own bear explanation did not completely satisfy even Thompson.

Over time, the incident began appearing in Bigfoot histories as an early or even the earliest recorded Sasquatch track report.

That description needs qualification.

Thompson documented an unidentified track. The interpretation of that track as possible Bigfoot evidence belongs to later cryptozoological history.

For more on the broader history of reported Sasquatch encounters, explore the Bigfoot & Sasquatch Case Files.

What the Evidence Actually Shows

The safest conclusion is also the most interesting one.

David Thompson really was traveling through the Canadian Rockies in January 1811. His route through Athabasca Pass is part of the documented history of western exploration. He also left a written description of encountering and measuring an unusually large animal track during that journey.

What we cannot establish is what animal made it.

There is no surviving footprint cast. There is no photograph. There is no specimen, hair sample, DNA evidence, or physical remains connected to the incident. Even the rear portion of the footprint did not register clearly in the snow.

A large grizzly bear remains a plausible explanation, and it was the explanation favored by the man who actually examined the track.

At the same time, Thompson's own writing makes clear that he considered several features unusual enough to document carefully.

That leaves the incident in a much more interesting position than simply calling it "the first Bigfoot track."

It is a genuine early nineteenth-century record of an unusually large animal footprint that later generations incorporated into Sasquatch history.

Whether the animal behind it was an old grizzly, an unusually distorted track, or something Thompson and his companions failed to recognize cannot now be determined.

David Thompson's 1811 account survives because it is unusually grounded for a story later absorbed into Bigfoot history. There is a known witness, a specific date, recorded measurements, and a written account produced by someone who was not trying to establish the existence of Sasquatch.

That does not make the footprint evidence of Bigfoot. Thompson himself favored a bear explanation.

But it does make the incident an important piece of the historical record behind the modern legend: a large, unusual animal track documented in the Canadian Rockies more than a century before the word "Bigfoot" entered popular culture.

Follow more historical sightings, evidence, and unexplained encounters in the Bigfoot & Sasquatch Case Files.

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• The Bigfoot Hub: Sasquatch Cases, Evidence, and Encounters
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