A tale the old-timers still whisper about when the fire burns low.
It is July 1924, and five hard-bitten gold prospectors have carved a claim high on the south flank of Mount St. Helens in a narrow, mist-choked gorge they named Ape Canyon. The men are Fred Beck, Gabe Lefever, John Peterson, Marion Smith, and Marion’s teenage son Roy. They are ex-loggers, trappers, and miners who have seen blizzards, cougars, and claim-jumpers without flinching. They sleep with Winchester rifles beside their bunks and dynamite under the floorboards.
One warm Saturday afternoon Fred Beck is walking back from Spirit Lake with a bucket of water when he spots something on the ridge two hundred yards above camp. A seven-foot-tall man covered head to toe in reddish-brown hair is standing motionless, staring down at him. Beck later wrote:
“I could see him as plainly as I see you now. He was watching me with curiosity. I raised my rifle and fired three times. He staggered, clutched his side, then tumbled down the cliff and out of sight.” Fred Beck, “I Fought the Apemen of Mt. St. Helens”, 1967
The men search the brush but find only a few blood spots. They figure the thing is dead or dying. They eat supper, laugh it off, and turn in early. Turns out, that was a big mistake.
Around ten o’clock that night the canyon explodes.
The first boulder hits the roof like a cannon shot. Then another. Then a steady, terrifying barrage. Some rocks weigh thirty to forty pounds. They crash through the shingles and bounce off the logs with force that rattles teeth. The men leap from their bunks, rifles in hand.
Marion Smith later told reporters:
“We were bombarded all night long. The things would lift rocks that no man could lift and hurl them onto the cabin from every direction. We fired through the walls whenever we saw a shadow, but it did no good. Marion Smith, interview, Portland Oregonian, July 1924
The creatures (there were at least three, maybe four) circled the cabin for twelve solid hours. They beat on the walls with clubs or fists that sounded like sledgehammers. They tore logs from the roof and dropped them down the chimney, trying to smoke the men out. Fred Beck said the whole cabin shook “like it was in an earthquake.”
The miners barricaded the door with their cots and took turns shooting through chinks in the logs. Muzzle flashes lit up huge silhouettes outside. Empty shell casings piled up on the floor. They fired until their barrels glowed red.
At one point Roy Smith, the youngest, screamed that something was trying to claw its way in through the roof. A massive hand reached down the chimney, fingers the size of carrots. Fred jammed his rifle up the flue and fired. A roar shook the canyon.
Dawn finally came.
The bombardment stopped as suddenly as it began. The men waited until full daylight, then crept outside with rifles ready.
The cabin was half destroyed. The roof sagged. Hundreds of giant human-like footprints ringed the site, some 16 to 19 inches long, pressed six inches deep into hard-packed dirt. Many showed only four toes. The tracks led straight up sheer cliff faces no human could climb.
They packed their gear in under an hour and fled the mountain, never to return.
The story broke nationwide.
On July 16, 1924 The Oregonian ran the front-page headline “Giant Apes Terrorize Miners”. Newspapers from New York to California picked it up. The men gave signed affidavits. Fred Beck spent the rest of his life telling the same story without changing a single detail. In the 1960s he passed a polygraph administered by a professional examiner.
Plaster casts taken from the canyon decades later match the 1924 descriptions perfectly, including the four-toed pattern and dermal ridges (skin lines) that hoaxers in 1924 could not have known about.
Sources
- The Oregonian, “Giant Apes Terrorize Miners”, 16 July 1924
- Portland Telegram, “Huge Apes Hurl Rocks at Miners”, 17 July 1924
- Fred Beck, “I Fought the Apemen of Mt. St. Helens”, self-published, 1967
- Signed affidavits of Fred Beck, Marion Smith, Gabe Lefever, John Peterson, Roy Smith, 1924-1967
- Polygraph examination of Fred Beck conducted by professional examiner, 1960s
- Plaster casts of 16 to 19 inch tracks from Ape Canyon area, 1970s to present (private collections)
- Peter Byrne expedition reports and track finds, 1970s
- William Jevning interviews with surviving family members and locals, 1980s to 2000s
- BFRO expedition reports, Ape Canyon site, 2002 to 2018
- Mount St. Helens ranger files referencing the 1924 incident
Final Verdict
Five armed men who knew the woods better than their own mothers spent twelve hours in a shooting war with something that laughed at bullets, threw boulders like toys, and left footprints no human hoaxer in 1924 could fake. The story has never changed in a hundred years. The evidence still sits in private collections today. Whatever walked Ape Canyon that night wanted those men dead, and it almost succeeded.