The Lost Giant Skeletons: Did the Smithsonian Really Bury the Evidence?

The History You Weren’t Taught in School

What if the story of ancient America taught in schools is missing a key chapter? Imagine a time when a race of giants roamed the continent, their existence so well-known that it was spoken of by presidents and reported as fact in hundreds of local newspapers.

Now, imagine that the physical proof of this race—their towering skeletons unearthed from coast to coast—was systematically gathered by a single, powerful institution and then vanished from history. This isn’t the plot of a fantasy novel. It is a story pieced together from a mountain of historical records that points to a disturbing conclusion: we have been denied a part of our past.

For over a century, from the early 1800s through the 1920s, newspapers across the United States chronicled an astonishing phenomenon. In towns from New York to California, and from Wisconsin to the deep South, farmers, laborers, and amateur archaeologists were digging into the earth and finding human skeletons of incredible size.

These were not isolated incidents. Researchers have compiled over 1,000 such accounts of skeletons measuring between seven and twelve feet tall, many found within the enigmatic earthen mounds that dot the American landscape.

This was not just the stuff of tabloid fantasy. The idea of an ancient race of American giants was once so ingrained in the national consciousness that even Abraham Lincoln could reference it in a speech about Niagara Falls: “The eyes of that species of extinct Giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now”. Lincoln was not telling a ghost story; he was referencing what was, in his time, considered a plausible part of the continent’s deep history.

Then, the stories stopped. After the first few decades of the 20th century, the reports of giant skeletons being unearthed seem to dry up almost completely. When you ask about them today, the official story from mainstream institutions like the Smithsonian is that these accounts were nothing more than a collection of hoaxes, misidentified animal bones, and the exaggerations of untrained amateurs.

This explanation presents a profound contradiction. Is it truly believable that hundreds of different people, across dozens of states, over the span of a century, all made the same mistake or told the same lie? That doctors, professors, and town officials were all equally fooled?

Or is it more likely that the evidence was real, and that it was intentionally removed from the public record? The disappearance of these giants from our history books is a mystery in itself. The central question is not just “Did giants exist?” but rather, “Where did all the bones go?” The trail of evidence, as we will see, often leads to the same place: the collections department of the Smithsonian Institution.

The Record They Do Not Want You To See: Curated Case Files

Before the official narrative was rewritten, the discovery of giant skeletons was documented with surprising frequency and detail. These were not vague rumors, but specific events reported in local papers by local people.

To understand the scale of what has been lost, one must look at the original reports—the raw data that has been systematically ignored for nearly a century. The following case files represent a small fraction of the hundreds of documented discoveries, chosen for their credibility, detail, and the questions they raise.

Case File 1: The Kanawha Valley Kings (1883, West Virginia)

In 1883, the Smithsonian Institution’s own Bureau of Ethnology dispatched a team of professional archaeologists, led by Professor Norris, to excavate a series of 50 ancient mounds in the Kanawha Valley near Charleston, West Virginia.

What they found was extraordinary. In one burial mound, they uncovered a vault containing a skeleton of “unusually large size,” which the official report measured at “seven feet six inches in length and nineteen inches between the shoulder sockets”.

This massive individual was not alone. He was surrounded by a circle of ten other skeletons, arranged in a clear ritual formation. The find was so significant that it was detailed in the Smithsonian’s own publications and reported in local papers like the Charleston Daily Mail. This is not a farmer’s tale; this is the Smithsonian’s own data.

Case File 2: The Brewersville Giant (1879, Indiana)

In a mound near Brewersville, Indiana, a team of amateur archaeologists led by a respected local physician, Dr. George W. Hill, unearthed a human skeleton that measured an incredible 9 feet 8 inches in length.

The involvement of a medical doctor is significant, as he would have been well-qualified to distinguish human bones from those of an animal, such as a mastodon—the most common explanation used by skeptics to dismiss such finds. The skeleton was found with a mica helmet and a crude stone axe, suggesting a figure of great importance.

Case File 3: The Ashtabula Giants (1878, Ohio)

The historical records of Ashtabula County, Ohio, document the excavation of a large burial ground containing an estimated two to three thousand graves. The report is explicit about the nature of the remains: “among the quantity of human bones they contain, there are found specimens belonging to men of large stature, and who must have been nearly allied to a race of giants”.

The account provides a compelling, tangible detail that defies easy dismissal: “Skulls were taken from these mounds, the cavities of which were of sufficient capacity to admit the head of an ordinary man, and jaw-bones that might be fitted on over the face with equal facility”.

Case File 4: The Catalina Island Royalty (1920s, California)

Off the coast of Southern California, Professor Ralph Glidden of the Catalina Museum conducted excavations on a monumental scale, uncovering a 6,000-year-old burial complex containing over 4,000 skeletons. According to his field reports, the remains belonged to a fair-skinned, blond- or red-haired race of giants.

The average height was reportedly around seven feet, but Glidden also found a succession of kings or chiefs, including one male skeleton that measured 9 feet 2 inches tall and a female that was nearly as large. This case is particularly crucial because Glidden’s detailed notes, maps, and hundreds of photographs were acquired by the Smithsonian.

The records are now held in the archives of the National Museum of the American Indian, but the thousands of skeletons themselves are said to be hidden away in restricted-access rooms, unavailable for independent study.

Case File 5: The Walnut Creek Giant (1911, Arizona)

This case provides a rare glimpse of resistance to the institutional collection of giant remains. In 1911, the Arizona Journal-Miner reported that a local rancher named Peter Marx had discovered the skeleton of a giant on his property at Walnut Creek.

The remains were examined by a Mr. Shoup, described as an “attache of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington,” who was deeply impressed by the skull, which indicated the individual was “of such abnormal size as to be beyond comprehension as that of a human being”.

Mr. Shoup wanted to take the skeleton back to Washington, but Marx refused, stating that “as the subject was found in the territory it should be kept there”. This account confirms the Smithsonian was actively seeking these specific skeletons in the field.

Case File 6: The Roman Giant of Tingis (81 BC, Morocco)

To demonstrate that these discoveries are not a uniquely American phenomenon, we can look to the records of the ancient world. The Roman historian Plutarch and others recorded an event in 81 BC in Tingis (modern-day Tangier, Morocco).

Local legends spoke of the city’s founder, the giant Antaeus, being buried in a nearby mound. Roman soldiers, seeking to verify the claim, excavated the mound and were stunned to unearth an “enormous skeleton”. Far from dismissing it, they treated the find with reverence and reburied it with great honors.

This ancient account mirrors the 19th-century American discoveries in nearly every respect: a local tradition of giants, a mound burial, and the unearthing of physical proof.

These cases, when viewed together, form a pattern that is difficult to ignore. The table below summarizes some of the most compelling reports, transforming a collection of anecdotes into a clear data set of a forgotten historical reality.

Year	Location (City, State)	Reported By	Claimed Height	Key Quote/Distinguishing Feature	Source
1878	Ashtabula County, OH	Ashtabula County Historical Record	“Gigantic Proportions”	“Skulls…of sufficient capacity to admit the head of an ordinary man.”	History of Ashtabula County, Ohio
1879	Brewersville, IN	George W. Hill, M.D.	9 ft 8 in	Found in a stone-and-clay-lined mound burial.	Indianapolis News
1883	Charleston, WV	Prof. Norris (Smithsonian B.A.E.)	7 ft 6 in	“measuring seven feet six inches in length and nineteen inches between the shoulder sockets.”	12th Annual BAE Report / Charleston Daily Mail
1897	Antietam Creek, MD	Maryland Academy of Sciences	7 ft+	“The vertebrae and bones of the legs are nearly as thick as those of a horse.”	Newspaper Report
1911	Walnut Creek, AZ	Peter Marx (Rancher)	“Abnormal Size”	A Smithsonian representative attempted to acquire the skeleton, but the owner refused.	Arizona Journal-Miner
1916	Sayre, PA	Prof. A.B. Skinner (American Indian Museum)	Average 7 ft	Excavation of 68 skeletons, with “many…taller” than seven feet.	Newspaper Report
1920s	Catalina Island, CA	Prof. Ralph Glidden	9 ft 2 in (King)	Part of a burial complex with over 4,000 skeletons, averaging 7 ft tall.	Field Reports in Smithsonian Archives
1959	Cresap Mound, WV	Dr. Donald Dragoo (Carnegie Museum)	7 ft 2 in	“This individual was of large proportions…All of the long bones were heavy.”	Mounds for the Dead by Don Dragoo

Paper Trails and Shipping Crates: Following the Evidence to the Smithsonian

If hundreds of giant skeletons were indeed found, their disappearance requires an explanation. Skeptics propose that the bones simply crumbled, were lost by careless farmers, or were reburied and forgotten. But a different, more deliberate pattern emerges when one follows the paper trail.

Time and again, reports indicate that the most significant finds were carefully packed and shipped to one destination: the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The institution was not a passive recipient; it was an active and eager collector.

In the late 19th century, the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), under the direction of John Wesley Powell, launched the Mound Exploration Division. Its primary mission was to survey and excavate the tens of thousands of ancient earthworks across the eastern United States.

The BAE actively encouraged local excavators to send their findings, particularly skeletal remains, to Washington for study. This official, government-funded program created a one-way pipeline through which countless artifacts and bones flowed from small towns across America into the vaults of the nation’s premier museum.

The Smithsonian’s own publications provide the most damning evidence. The Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, published in 1894, contains a massive study by Cyrus Thomas titled “Report on the Mound Explorations.” In this report, Thomas details the BAE’s work in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia—the exact same excavations mentioned in Case File #1.

The official report describes the excavation of the Criel Mound, where agents found a central burial of what they called a “once most powerful man” whose skeleton was of “very large” size, surrounded by ten other skeletons in a spoke-like pattern.

The Smithsonian’s own field agents were finding and documenting precisely what the local newspapers were reporting: the graves of giants. This creates an undeniable link. The popular press wasn’t fabricating stories; it was accurately reporting on the findings of the Smithsonian’s own scientific teams.

This makes the institution’s modern-day denials all the more perplexing. The paper trail often leads directly to their doorstep, only to vanish into a bureaucratic fog.

The Black Creek, Pennsylvania Skeletons (1953):
A report in the Charleroi Mail described the unearthing of 49 skeletons, the tallest being eight feet. The article explicitly states they were “reportedly taken to the Harrisburg Museum for reassembly and then shipped to the Smithsonian for further study.” Yet, it adds a crucial line: “However, the Smithsonian denies any knowledge of them”. Here, the chain of custody is reported, alongside the official denial.
The Stoddard, Wisconsin Collection (1912):
A newspaper article about the excavation of a 6.5-foot skeleton from a mound in Stoddard notes that “agents of the Smithsonian Institution” had investigated mounds in that same area 30 years prior. The article confirms that a “Stoddard Collection of Indian relics” exists in Washington as a result of that earlier dig. It then notes, “Since that time Smithsonian officials have often considered opening more of the mounds but nothing has been done”. This suggests a known site of interest, with artifacts already in their possession, was simply left unexamined.
The Cartersville, Georgia Giant (1884):
A committee of scientists “sent out from the Smithsonian Institution” excavated a stone vault near Cartersville, Georgia, and found the skeleton of a giant measuring 7 feet 2 inches, buried with a copper crown. The report concludes: “All the relics were carefully packed and sent to the Smithsonian Institution, and are said to be the most interesting collection ever found in America”. Where is this “most interesting collection” today?

The Smithsonian’s current position is that no such skeletons of “giants” exist in their collections. This statement forces one of two conclusions. Either every single one of these newspaper reports, county histories, and even the Smithsonian’s own early publications were wrong, or the institution is actively concealing or denying a significant part of its collection.

The contradiction is not between fringe newspapers and sober science, but between the Smithsonian’s own documented history of acquisition and its present-day public statements. The bones didn’t just disappear; they were collected, accessioned, and then, it seems, deliberately forgotten.

Voices Older Than Newspapers: Echoes of Giants in Ancient Traditions

Long before newspapers began reporting on farmers plowing up giant bones, the Indigenous peoples of North America were preserving a detailed history of the giants who came before them. These are not children’s fables about friendly giants in the clouds; they are sober, often grim, oral traditions passed down for generations, recounting epic wars and the eventual destruction of a powerful predecessor race.

When treated as the historical records they are, these traditions provide a stunningly consistent context for the physical evidence unearthed in the 19th century. The geographical alignment between the lands of these legends and the locations of major giant skeleton discoveries is too precise to be a coincidence.

The Si-Te-Cah of the Paiute:
The Paiute people of Nevada have a detailed tradition of a war against a race of red-haired, cannibalistic giants they called the Si-Te-Cah, a name meaning “tule-eaters”. According to the legend, the Paiute and allied tribes pursued the last of the Si-Te-Cah into a large cave, piled brush at the entrance, and set it ablaze, annihilating their enemies.This story was recorded by Sarah Winnemucca, a Paiute author and daughter of a chief, in her 1883 book, years before any major excavation. She wrote, “My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son”.In 1911 and 1924, miners and then archaeologists excavated this very cave—now known as Lovelock Cave. They found thousands of artifacts, including mummified human remains, some with reddish hair, and woven sandals of astonishing size, some over 15 inches long. The archaeological evidence provided a direct, physical confirmation of the Paiute’s long-held oral tradition.
The Nahullo of the Choctaw:
In his 1899 “History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez Indians,” historian Horatio Cushman recorded the Choctaw’s foundational story. Their tradition “told of a race of giants that once inhabited the now State of Tennessee, and with whom their ancestors fought when they arrived in Mississippi in their migration from the west”.The Choctaw called this race the Nahullo, a people of “wonderful stature” who were also cannibals. This tradition perfectly aligns with the numerous newspaper reports of 7- and 8-foot skeletons being unearthed from mounds throughout Tennessee.
The Stone Giants of the Iroquois:
The Iroquois Confederacy of the Northeast tells of the Genonsgwa, or “Stone Giants.” These were a primordial race of man-eating giants, said to be twice the height of a man, with skin so hard that it repelled all weapons.In some versions, the Thunder God, Hi’nun, had to intervene to help the Iroquois finally defeat this powerful enemy. This tradition of a formidable, warlike race of giants provides the historical backdrop for the many giant skeletons found in mounds across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
The “Gigantic” Osage:
It wasn’t only legends of past races; early European explorers and officials noted the exceptional height of some contemporary tribes. In 1819, naturalist John Bradbury described the Osage people as “so tall and robust as almost to warrant the application of the term gigantic”.In an 1804 letter, President Thomas Jefferson, after meeting an Osage delegation, wrote that they were “certainly the most gigantic men we have ever seen”. The painter George Catlin, who spent years documenting Indigenous peoples, called the Osage “the tallest race of men in North America,” noting many were six and a half feet and some were taller than seven feet.These historical accounts establish that unusual stature was a known characteristic of certain tribes, lending plausibility to the idea of an ancestral race that was even taller.

These traditions, from separate corners of the continent, paint a coherent picture. They speak of a time when their ancestors contended with and ultimately overcame a race of giants. The 19th-century discoveries were not a series of random, inexplicable finds; they were the archaeological rediscovery of the very people spoken of in these ancient histories.

To dismiss the physical evidence is to also dismiss the validity of Indigenous oral history, an act that continues a long pattern of silencing the continent’s original historical record.

Anatomy of a “Giant”: How We Know They Were Big

The claims of 8-, 9-, or even 10-foot skeletons can seem unbelievable, bordering on the biologically impossible. This is a key argument of skeptics, who suggest that untrained amateurs, unfamiliar with human anatomy, simply mistook large but normal bones for something more fantastic.

However, the science of osteology—the study of bones—provides a clear mathematical framework for estimating height. When this science is applied, the historical accounts appear far more plausible, and the observers seem far more sophisticated than they are given credit for.

Forensic anthropologists can estimate a person’s living stature with a high degree of accuracy using the length of their long bones, with the femur (thigh bone) being the most reliable indicator. The relationship between bone length and height is expressed through regression formulas developed by studying thousands of skeletons of known stature.

While these formulas vary slightly based on sex and ancestry, a generalized formula for a male of European ancestry is: Stature(cm)=2.32×(Femur Length in cm)+65.53 cm ±3.94 cm

Using this established scientific method, we can work backward from the reported heights to see what size bones would have been found.

An 8-foot-tall individual (243.8 cm) would have a femur approximately 76.8 cm (30.2 inches) long.
A 9-foot-tall individual (274.3 cm) would have a femur approximately 89.9 cm (35.4 inches) long.
A 10-foot-tall individual (304.8 cm) would have a femur approximately 103.1 cm (40.6 inches) long.

These numbers give us a concrete, measurable basis for evaluating the historical reports. And indeed, some of those reports recorded precisely this kind of data. A scrapbook in the Deerfield Museum in Massachusetts, for instance, contains a reference to a 29-inch femur being discovered.

While not reaching the 9-foot mark, a 29-inch (73.7 cm) femur would correspond to a person roughly 7 feet 9 inches tall—a true giant by any standard. The fact that 19th-century observers were measuring femur bones and using comparative anatomy (e.g., “a jawbone that could be easily slipped over his face” ) demonstrates a level of observation that goes far beyond simple ignorance. They were attempting to quantify an anomaly.

Furthermore, extreme height is a known, if rare, medical phenomenon. Gigantism, typically caused by a pituitary tumor that leads to an overproduction of growth hormone, can result in individuals growing to heights well over seven or eight feet.

While modern medicine can treat this condition, it would have been unchecked in ancient populations. Paleopathologists have confirmed cases of gigantism in the archaeological record. A notable example is a skeleton from the Roman Imperial Age (3rd century AD) found near Rome.

The young man, aged 16-20, was estimated to be 202 cm (6 feet 7.5 inches) tall, and his bones showed he was still growing. He stood nearly a foot and a half taller than the average Roman male of his time. This find provides hard, scientific proof that individuals of giant stature existed in antiquity.

The science does not make 9-foot skeletons common, but it makes them possible. The historical accounts are not describing impossibilities, but rather extreme outliers—a population or lineage that may have carried a genetic predisposition for great height, perhaps amplified by the condition of gigantism.

The numbers show that the “giant” discoveries of the 19th century are not just tall tales, but are consistent with the principles of human biology.

Photos, Postcards, and “Too Big to Be True” Images

In the modern internet age, the debate over giant skeletons has become dominated by sensational photographs. A quick search will reveal dozens of images showing massive human skulls and skeletons being excavated by awestruck archaeologists.

These images have become the primary “evidence” for many believers, but they are also the easiest to discredit, and in doing so, they serve a more subtle purpose: to poison the well and cast doubt on the entire field of inquiry.

By far the most circulated image shows a lone archaeologist in a sandy pit, carefully brushing away dirt from a human skeleton of impossible size—perhaps 15 to 20 feet tall. This image, and many like it, are modern creations.

They originated in a series of Photoshop contests held in the early 2000s by the website Worth1000.com (now DesignCrowd). The theme of the contest was “Archaeological Anomalies,” and the explicit goal was to create a convincing, but fake, image of a historical or archaeological hoax.

The creator of the most famous image, an artist known as “IronKite,” was a master of his craft. The image was so convincing that it quickly escaped the confines of the contest and began circulating in emails and on forums as genuine proof of giant discoveries, often attached to a fabricated story about a National Geographic team in the Saudi Arabian desert.

However, the practice of creating fake giants is not new. The most famous example is the Cardiff Giant, “discovered” in 1869 in Cardiff, New York. This 10-foot-tall “petrified man” was, in fact, a statue carved from a block of gypsum at the behest of a tobacconist named George Hull.

His goal was to mock biblical literalists who believed in giants and to make a fortune charging admission—both of which he did successfully. The Cardiff Giant became a national sensation, and even when it was exposed as a hoax, the showman P.T. Barnum created his own fake of the fake and exhibited it to massive crowds.

Other hoaxes followed, like the “San Diego Giant,” a mummy exhibited in 1895 that was later tested by the Smithsonian in 1908 and found to be made of gelatin. These events are often used by skeptics to argue that all giant stories are hoaxes. But this misses a crucial point.

The existence of a counterfeit dollar bill does not prove that real money doesn’t exist. In fact, the Smithsonian’s willingness to investigate and publicly debunk the San Diego Giant makes its silence and denial regarding the hundreds of mound discoveries even more suspicious.

The modern Photoshop fakes serve a powerful strategic purpose, whether intentional or not. They have become so widespread that they are now the public face of the “giant skeleton” phenomenon. Anyone new to the topic is likely to encounter these images first, quickly learn they are fake, and dismiss the entire subject as a joke without ever digging deeper into the legitimate historical record.

The easily debunked digital hoaxes act as a smokescreen, preventing people from ever examining the hundreds of pre-digital, text-based newspaper accounts, county histories, and institutional reports that form the real, and far more disturbing, body of evidence. They want you to argue about the fake photos so you never ask about the real bones.

The Suppression Theory: A Century of Silence

The evidence points to a conclusion that is as logical as it is unsettling: the giant skeletons of North America were real, they were discovered and documented in great numbers, and they were systematically removed from the historical record by the very institution entrusted with preserving it.

This was not the work of shadowy villains in a secret cabal, but rather the logical, if scientifically unforgivable, outcome of a major institutional effort to control the narrative of American prehistory.

To understand the motive, one must understand the central archaeological debate of the 19th century: the “Mound Builder” myth. As American settlers moved west, they encountered tens of thousands of complex earthen mounds, fortifications, and geometric enclosures.

The prevailing theory, steeped in the racism of the era, was that these sophisticated structures could not have been built by the ancestors of the “savage” Native American tribes still living in the region. Instead, they were attributed to a vanished, superior “race of Mound Builders”—perhaps Vikings, stray Welshmen, or the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

This myth was politically convenient, as it suggested that European settlers were not displacing the original inhabitants, but merely reclaiming lands from the “savages” who had themselves displaced the noble Mound Builders.

The newly formed Smithsonian Institution and its Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) made it their primary mission to debunk this myth. Under the direction of John Wesley Powell and Cyrus Thomas, the BAE launched a massive, federally funded project to prove that the ancestors of modern Native Americans were, in fact, the true builders of the mounds.

Their work culminated in Thomas’s monumental 700-page Report on the Mound Explorations in 1894, which scientifically established this link and became the “official dogma” of American archaeology.

Into this great scientific and political project, the giant skeletons fell like a wrench in the gears. These anomalous remains, often found directly within the mounds the Smithsonian was studying, complicated the clean, simple narrative they were trying to build.

Giants didn’t fit the picture of a homogenous ancestral Native American population. Worse, they gave credence to the very myths, biblical stories, and folk legends that the institution was trying to replace with sober science. The giants were inconvenient evidence, so the evidence had to disappear.

The means of this disappearance was bureaucratic erasure, and its chief architect was Aleš Hrdlička, the influential curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian for four decades. Hrdlička established a firm institutional policy: there was no such thing as a race of giants.

In a 1934 interview, he dismissed the hundreds of reports as the product of the public’s “will to believe” and the incompetence of “amateur anthropologists” who were easily fooled by human anatomy. This was not a conclusion based on new evidence; it was a policy directive. As one researcher noted, bones sent to the Smithsonian that were claimed to be from giants were simply re-cataloged. They “vanished into the catalogs of normal human bones and normal animal bones”.

This process is nearly impossible to reverse-engineer. Museum collections are vast and often stored in off-site facilities like the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center in Maryland. An artifact’s journey from a field discovery in 1883 to a modern museum shelf involves accessioning, cataloging, and potential re-cataloging.

Without a specific accession number, finding a particular skeleton mentioned in an old newspaper is a herculean task. Furthermore, the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990, while a landmark act of justice, has resulted in many skeletal remains being returned to tribes for reburial, placing them permanently beyond the reach of further study.

The system, whether by design or by consequence, is a perfect machine for making inconvenient evidence disappear. The suppression was an act of aggressive curation—of shaping history by deciding which evidence was allowed to be seen and which was to be filed away into oblivion.

How You Can Investigate: A Citizen Sleuth’s Field Guide

The story of the lost giants is not sealed in a forgotten tomb. The evidence is waiting in public archives, local museums, and university libraries across the country. The internet has made it possible for any dedicated citizen sleuth to pick up the trail and contribute to uncovering this hidden history. Here is a field guide to starting your own investigation.

Step 1: Dig into the Newspaper Archives

The single greatest resource is the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America project, which provides free access to millions of pages of digitized historical newspapers from 1770 to 1963.

Use Proximity Searches: Don’t just search for “giant skeleton.” The Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can be imperfect. Instead, use the advanced search to find words near each other. A search for “giant” within 5 or 10 words of “skeleton” will yield better results. Other useful keywords include “mound,” “enormous,” “relics,” “bones,” and “prehistoric.”
Filter by Location and Date: Narrow your search to a specific state and focus on the peak period of discoveries, roughly 1870-1920. If you are investigating a specific case, like the Ashtabula finds, you can filter for Ohio newspapers from 1878.
Follow the Story: When you find an initial report, look for follow-up articles in the subsequent days and weeks.

Step 2: Contact Local Historical Societies and Museums

Many of these discoveries were intensely local events. The first and best place to look for records is often the county historical society or town museum in the area where the find was reported.

Find the Right Organization:
State historical societies often maintain directories of local organizations. The Indiana Historical Society, for example, provides a list of county historians and local history groups on its website. Similar resources exist for most states.
Be Specific:
When you contact them, have the details from the newspaper report ready: the date, the location (e.g., the Woolverton farm), and the names of the people involved.

Step 3: Check University Theses and Dissertations

Graduate students in archaeology and anthropology often write theses on local excavations. These academic papers can contain invaluable details, maps, and references not found anywhere else.

Search University Repositories: Most universities now have digital repositories for their theses and dissertations. Search the websites of universities near the location of a reported find for terms like “[County Name] archaeology,” “mound excavation,” or the name of a specific site.

Step 4: Request Accession Records Respectfully

Approaching a museum with a formal research request can seem intimidating, but it is a standard process. A polite, clear, and professional email is the best approach. Use the template below as a guide.

Email Template for Museum/Historical Society Inquiry

Subject:
Research Inquiry:[Location] Archaeological Find

To:

Body:

Dear,

My name is, and I am an independent researcher investigating a historical account of an archaeological discovery made in in.

According to an article in the [Newspaper Name] dated, the remains of an unusually large skeleton were found at and were reportedly sent to your institution for study.

I am writing to respectfully inquire if you have any accession records, catalog entries, field notes, or correspondence corresponding to this discovery. The accession number is unknown, but any information related to artifacts or skeletal remains collected from [Location] around that time period would be immensely helpful to my research.

Thank you for your time and assistance in this matter.

Sincerely,

Final Thought: The Search Continues

The evidence for a lost race of giants in North America is not hidden in a mythical city or a secret vault. It is hiding in plain sight, scattered across thousands of microfilmed newspaper pages, tucked away in the files of small-town historical societies, and buried in the footnotes of academic papers.

For a century, the official story has been that there is nothing to see, that the tales are all smoke and mirrors. But the sheer volume of the historical record says otherwise.

The truth of this lost chapter of our past will not be handed down from the institutions that have ignored it for so long. It will be rediscovered by a new generation of curious, dedicated, and independent researchers who have the courage to question the official story and the tools to find the answers for themselves. The investigation is not over; it is just beginning.

This is a call to action. Become a citizen sleuth. Go to the archives. Digitize and share what you find. Send your leads—scans of forgotten newspaper articles, lost county histories, museum accession numbers—to the forums and communities that are actively piecing this puzzle together.

History is not just what we are told. It is what we have the courage to uncover. The search for the giants is a search for a history that has been taken from us, and it is time to take it back.