A-Frame home buried in volcano mud.

Bigfoot and the Buried A-Frame

Kid Valley, Washington

About 8 1/2 hours after Mount St. Helens blew its volcanic stack on May 18, 1980 -- killing Bigfoot -- a river of mud arrived in Kid Valley, some 25 miles distant.

Reaching speeds on the way of up to 70 mph, the mud slowed to a leisurely 20 mph when it destroyed the homes in this forested hollow along Hwy 504. A newly-built A-frame house filled with 200 tons of silt, mud, water and ash.

While other signs of catastrophe are gone, the A-frame remains as part of a tourist attraction -- the North Fork Survivors Gift Shop. You can walk through the A-Frame's ground floor -- now below ground, since the mud flow raised the local elevation by a few feet.

As if physical evidence of the worst North American eruption in modern history wasn't enough, the attraction guarantees you will pull over by featuring the largest Bigfoot statue we've yet seen.

The Mount St. Helens Bigfoot statue is 28-feet tall, made of concrete, with intricately detailed fur and a folklorish grin. It's as if, instead of fleeing from whirring cameras, he decided to stop and strike a cute pose. You can do likewise, with the whole family, around his legs.

After the eruption, some claimed that the "real" Bigfoot had been killed once and for all.

The owners of the Survivors Gift Shop decided to honor his memory when they built their original Bigfoot statue in the mid-1980s. It was slightly smaller than the current one, and made of combustible materials, as proved by its incineration by vandals in the mid-1990s.

But if the real Bigfoot isn't a survivor, the Bigfoot statue is.

Also see: Creatures Guide: Bigfoot