Teens find footprint in abandoned strip mining area near Pittsburg witnessed in Crawford County, Kansas

Open Map

In the early summer of 1981 when I was 13, my cousin, his small nephew, and I were exploring some of the wasted slag heaps left over from the strip pit mining days located around a mile behind my aunt's house. The slag heaps undulate as they go, rising upwards near twenty-five feet and then dropping back down again like a series of small hills. Great for mountain biking. In between these small hills are small pools of collected water from rainfall, which serve as excellent locales for frogs and tadpoles to live or other animals to drink from. The hills themselves are composed of clay with broken shale serving as small spines sticking out from the surface, not a place you want to walk barefoot through, which I have, only to have my feet sliced open time and time again. Anyhow, as we were walking though these hills, I came upon a large footprint, which I would estimate to be at least 18 inches long and 7 inches wide. There was only one print and it had been made in the soft mud of one...