In the 19th and early 20th centuries, hundreds of newspaper articles throughout the U.S. reported about the discovery of the skeletal remains of giants.
Bones of creatures said to have measured anywhere from 8-feet to 20-feet in height were uncovered in places ranging from Tennessee (the so-called Williamson County Giant) to Nevada (Lovelock Cave’s Red-Headed Giants).
This giant-mania even reached the Kittitas Valley, where, on May 9, 1912, a man named M.E. Root, who worked for Ellensburg contractor Edward C. Belch, made an unexpected discovery while using dynamite to loosen the hard soil—called “cement rock” in the newspapers—on Craig’s Hill during the construction of a new 24-room apartment house.
After detonating the explosives, the noticed something white and shiny peeking through the soil. He leaned over to get a better look and was shocked to see a human skull half-buried in the rock.
“No effort was made to molest the balance of the skeleton till later in the afternoon, when the small son of contractor Belch was told by his father of the discovery,” the Yakima Herald reported two days later. “With the aid of a pick, he uncovered the perfect skeleton.”
According to news accounts, the younger Belch removed the bones so they could later be studied and identified.
Word of the astounding discovery soon reached John P. Munson, a professor of biological sciences at the Washington State Normal School (now known as Central Washington University).
A dapper man with a full beard and thick hair, Munson was a Norwegian-American zoologist and educator who had written a textbook, Education Through Natural Study, and served as head of the school’s department of biology.
Eager to see the bones for himself, he visited the discovery site and while poking around in the soil, “unearthed [another] skull that was broken up by the pick,” according to the newspaper. He studied the bones and pronounced that they were clearly those of a prehistoric Native American.
Munson noted the teeth had a “peculiar formation” and indicated he thought it was because of “eating uncooked foods, as was the habit of primitive people.” He noted the bones were “perfectly dry” and beneath a strata of shale rock that had preserved them. He estimated they were “many hundreds of years” in age.
The newspaper said the bones were uncovered 20 feet beneath the surface of the hill and the gravesites had apparently been tunneled into the hillside.
Dr. B.J. Moss, a local physician and the city health officer for Ellensburg, told the Herald that since the femur of the largest of the two skeletons was nearly 20 inches, that meant the prehistoric man was about 80 inches tall—or six-feet, eight-inches—because a man’s height is generally four times the length of the femur.
The article also said that one of the skulls was unusually large and had an upper jaw with two complete and distinct rows of teeth in front, each set being perfectly formed. This was regarded as highly unusual by Munson, who told the newspaper that “he did not regard the two rows of teeth as a racial attribute, but rather as a freak of nature.”
The Herald story was quickly reprinted and repackaged by dozens of other newspapers across the country. And like a game of telephone, the story was exaggerated at nearly each retelling.
For example, The Morning Olympian noted, “At Ellensburg they have unearthed a primeval man skeleton with two rows of teeth, what an opportunity for the old-time dentists,” while the Washington Standard, also published in Olympia, noted, “The jaw bone, which broke apart when removed, is so large that it will go around the face of the man of to-day. The other bones are also much larger than that of ordinary men.”
The Ottawa, Kansas Evening Herald published a follow-up story with the flippant headline, “Old Timer Must Have Been A Big Fellow.” The Herald article also quoted L.L. Sharp, chief of the General Land Office Field Division in Portland, Oregon, who said, “I just returned from Ellensburg, where I had an opportunity to view the bones. The skull jawbone, thigh, and other parts of the largest skeleton indicated a man to my mind at least eight feet high. A man of his stature and massive frame would weigh fully 300 pounds at the least.”
Sharp noted that he was convinced the bones were of a prehistoric race of giants who inhabited the region prior to the arrival of Native Americans.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the number of skeletons uncovered also grew in subsequent stories. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that eleven skeletons of primitive men, all with sloping foreheads and two rows of teeth, had been discovered in Ellensburg. The story also said their jawbones were so large they would wrap around the face of a modern-day man.
Anthropological archaeologist Andy White, who frequently debunks anthropological hoaxes and untruths, noted in a 2014 blog post that one problem with the Ellensburg Giant story is how the femur bone was measured.
“If we assume that the femur measurement of 20 inches [as reported at the time] is accurate, it is possible to estimate the height of the individual using equations that are based on much more data than were available in the early 1900s,” he wrote. “It is reasonable to conclude that the original estimate of 6’8” was too high, as was the ‘to my mind’ estimate of 8’ provided by L.L. Sharp. The actual height of the individual was probably closer to 6’ or less.”
Additionally, White said the double row of teeth may simply have been teeth worn down by grinding: “The phrase ‘double teeth all around’ was commonly used in the nineteenth century to describe individuals with such a high degree of tooth wear that it appeared as if all the teeth in the mouth were molars.”
His conclusion was that while the Ellensburg remains were probably those of a “relatively large individual,” it was not a giant.
“The individual may have had some ‘extra’ anterior teeth, but more likely simply had a high degree of wear on his entire dentition. This was not unusual among prehistoric Native Americans,” he added.
Munson, who was a well-respected academic who taught at the Normal School from 1899 to 1928 (and was the namesake for Munson Hall), was present for the initial discovery, but it’s noteworthy that while he thought the teeth were unusual, at no time was he quoted saying the uncovered bones were from a race of prehistoric giants nor did he indicate that 11 skeletons were found. Those “facts” largely appeared in later accounts.
As for the final resting place of the remains, that’s one detail none of the media accounts shared.
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