Do You Believe The "jacko" Story?

[Guest]

The 1884 "Jacko" story has always fascinated me. It was the first "Bigfoot" media sensation, sans the term "Bigfoot".

It involves railroad workers capturing a juvenile creature near a railroad tunnel in British Columbia.

Later when the creature was being held at a local jail cell, allegedly hundreds came out to see it but were turned away. The local sheriff, stated there was no creature at the jail.

The animal was supposed to have been shipped via boat to London, however during the excursion the creature died and was buried at sea.

Post your thoughts and comments.

Edited November 16, 2010 by Squatchdetective

[Guest Knuck]

The local newspaper account doesn't seem to have that yellow tinge of sensationalism that was so prevalant at the time, and for my own personal private reasons, I think the story, at least in some respects, could have in fact happened.-Knuck

[Guest]

Captured and held for some time, reported in newspapers, exhibited in B.C., shipped to London for exhibition . . . yet not a single photograph was taken of this amazing creature? This allegedly took place in 1882 not 1812, it's not unreasonable to expect a photograph if this really happened.

[Woodslore]

I had always heard that the creature went missing on a transport train or truck myself. Plus that the few pictures that were taken of the creature were destroyed or sold to a private collector. In my view this story has some truth to it but I think over time it met the fate of all stories and was changed to enhance it.

[Guest UPs]

To me, this story seems more of symptom of the times and not nessicarily based on fact. I mean, not even a blobsquatch picture?

[Huntster]

I have no reason not to believe the story.

Indeed, one of the realities I always considered about this story was that the news reports mentioned the possibility that the creature may have been a "gorilla", and that gorillas had only been "discovered" less than 25 years before, and that Yale, BC, was about as remote a location as one might find in 1882. Nobody there had ever seen a gorilla before.

[Guest tracker]

I read that even the local judge seen the creature at some point. So how would an old hard nosed judge and his credibility stand up verse the skeptics I wonder? Anyways something happened and there were mulitple credible witnesses plus the RR workers as the report goes. People were alot more serious back then. The jokers or BS'ers types didn't get hired on by the very strict railway companies. Any evidence would of dissapeared for one reason or another. Might of even been order so to return order to the town and rail business. That was the lay of the land back then. Talk to your elders about the differences between today's world and there's when they were young. Night and day.

[Guest]

I think it could be true, or at least parts of it. The article mentions longer forearms and greater strength than a man. It also refereed to the beast being covered with hair not fur, which a lot of modern witnesses state as well. Like Saskeptic said though, surely someone would have photographed it.

[Huntster]

Like Saskeptic said though, surely someone would have photographed it.

Why would that be so certain? How big was Yale in 1882? How prevalent was photography in British Columbia in 1882? Are there any other photos from 1882 era Yale, BC, by a resident photographer?

[Guest Spazmo]

...and nobody at the time was carrying a camera around with them like we do now. Photography was difficult. Are there any pics of the area at the time? If there are none or very few, then it stands to reason that photography might not have been easily available at that particular time and place.

[Guest River]

Where are its bones? Any proof of its existence other than in print?

[Guest Lesmore]

I'm familiar with this story about Jacko. I first read it about 40 years ago and found it a fascinating account.

It has many components of a first rate mystery....a tale of the inexplicable.

I've lived in Western Canada and had a strong interest in Canadian history for many years.

Back in the early days of early European settlement,British Columbia had many ' entrepreneurs', who were successful at turning a dollar.

It was a frontier atmosphere and money was generally made through exploiting resources (lumber, mining, etc., also furs) that abound in that part of the world.

Yes there is a newspaper account, but as a previous poster, Saskeptic indicates...it's strange that no photographs appear to exist.

Photographs were not uncommon in this era. A newspaper of any business would have access to a photographer, in fact I would be surprised if a photographer was not on the newspaper's staff.

I have just completed reading and viewing a book containing and about the many photographs by famous US photographer, Mathew Brady and members of his company. Brady is still famous for his pictures, particularly in the 1860's to 1880's.

Yes, he, like other professional photographers used a large, tripod mounted, plate view camera and then developed the plate with chemicals that they carried with them in horse drawn wagon.

They traveled throughout the country, were famous for their ...at the scene...photographs of the Civil War and also landscapes in the frontier.

I mention Brady as an example of an early photographer. Brady traveled about, but also many a small town had as one of their businesses, a portrait photographer.

I'm pretty sure there would be a photograph.

Makes me wonder about this Jacko story.

Edited November 16, 2010 by Lesmore

[Guest Lesmore]

More info about Victoria. By the late 1850's it had a population of over 5000. It was a major port. The population was increasing. The Jacko story is from the Victoria B.C. newspaper in the 1880's.

There would be a number of professional photographers in a city this size, back then. Here's a Wikipedia account of Victoria's history.

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCMQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FVictoria%2C_British_Columbia&rct=j&q=victoria%20b.c%20188%27s%20population&ei=a9biTM6ONYX0tgOQ8flm&usg=AFQjCNFebqJWRaNZVcDhcHBzCa0FKV0A_w&cad=rja

Edited November 16, 2010 by Lesmore

[Huntster]

More info about Victoria. By the late 1850's it had a population of over 5000. It was a major port. The population was increasing. The Jacko story is from the Victoria B.C. newspaper in the 1880's.

There would be a number of professional photographers in a city this size, back then.

About the newspaper:

The Times Colonist is the oldest daily newspaper in Western Canada. The TC used to be two different papers, The British Colonist, founded in gold rush days in 1858, and the Victoria Daily Times, which started in 1884.

About Yale:

Yale is an unincorporated though historically very important small town in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It was founded in 1848 by the Hudson's Bay Company...........

.......Yale is on the Fraser River and is generally considered to be on the dividing line between the Coast and the Interior. Immediately north of the village the Fraser Canyon begins, and the river is generally considered unnavigable past this point, although rough water is common on the Fraser anywhere upstream from Chilliwack, and even more so above Hope, about 20 miles south of Yale. But steamers could make it to Yale, good pilots and water conditions permitting, and the town had a busy dockside life as well as a variety of bars, restaurants, hotels, saloons and various services. Its maximum population during the gold rush was in the 15,000 range, although typically it housed 5-8,000. The higher figure relates to the evacuation of the Canyon during the Fraser Canyon War of 1858.

Being the head of river navigation also meant being the best location for the start of the Cariboo Wagon Road (as there were no usable roads between Yale and the settlements nearer the Fraser's mouth. The Cariboo Road ran from Yale to Barkerville via Lytton, Ashcroft and Quesnel, built in the early 1860s. By the start of the 1870s an overland route from New Westminster was finally built - the Yale Road, formally the Grand Trunk Road and known today as Old Yale Road, which is still extant in sections from Surrey through Abbotsford and Chilliwack (though no longer entirely a continuous "highway"). Its counterpart on the north side of the river was the Dewdney Trunk Road, built in the same period in advance of railway construction in the 1880s, but which ran only to Dewdney, just east of Mission City.......

.......Three-times daily rail service to Vancouver - begun in the early 1880s before construction in the Canyon was finished in 1885 - made access between Yale a popular excursion run.......

Thus, Yale was only accessible to the Victoria newspaper via riverboat or the train during the rail construction period, and it was at least a 125 mile run by rail. And the "Daily Colonist" may not be either the "Times Colonist" or the "British Colonist" mentioned in the Vitoria Times Colonist history page. It may have been a small, competing newspaper that simply disappeared, and never had a photographer.

Edited November 16, 2010 by Huntster

[Drew]

Here are some comments on the JACKO story

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/story-jacko/

John Green continued digging into story and finally discovered that microfilms of British Columbia newspapers from the 1880s existed at the University of British Columbia. Green then found two important articles that threw light on the whole affair.

The New Westminster, British Columbia, Mainland Guardianof July 9, 1884, mentioned the story and noted: “The ‘What Is It’ is the subject of conversation in town. How the story originated, and by whom, is hard for one to conjecture. Absurdity is written on the face of it. The fact of the matter is, that no such animal was caught, and how the Colonist was duped in such a manner, and by such a story, is strange.â€

On July 11, 1884, the British Columbian carried the news that some 200 people had gone to the jail to view Jacko. But the “only wild man visible†was a man, who was humorously called the “governor of the goal [jail], who completely exhausted his patience†fielding the repeated inquiries from the crowd about the nonexistent creature.

Edited November 16, 2010 by Drew