SPOKANE, Wash. — It is a mystery that fascinated Sasquatch hunters and enthusiasts around the Northwest: Was Bigfoot roaming around Sherman Pass?
The Washington State Department of Transportation tweeted photos of what it said might be a Sasquatch at Sherman Pass in late January.
The sighting was caught by a traffic camera pointed toward State Route 20 on Sherman Pass and showed what appeared to be a Sasquatch-like figure near a tree.
People played along, replying to the tweet to ask for more photos and if a search party could be formed to look for the figure spotted by the cameras.
The state DOT gave an update on the Bigfoot sighting on Wednesday, saying the figure near the tree was gone during crews' recent visit to the area.
"Rumor has it someone placed a 3/4" wood cutout of Bigfoot on the tree. However, if you look now, the cutout is now gone," the person running the DOT Twitter account wrote on Wednesday.
As it turns out, Sasquatch is not the first bizarre thing to pop up on the Sherman Pass traffic camera.
Ryan Overton, communications director for WSDOT East, told KREM in January that strange things have been happening in front of the same camera for the past 15 years.
Some of the bizarre things to pop up in front of the camera are an inflatable alien doll that moved positions several times and a Christmas tree with battery-powered lights, Overton said.
Overton suspects that someone living in an area near Sherman Pass, like Republic, Colville or Kettle Falls, has been having some fun with the camera. He added that it's about a 100-foot hike to the area where the traffic camera is situated.