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Up The Road: Bigfoot

Photo courtesy of the Humboldt County Convention & Visitors Bureau
Bigfoot Days.

Many of you already have plans for Labor Day weekend. If you don’t: Head up the road to Willow Creek, a spot in the road overlooking the Trinity River, two hours west of Redding, for the 56th Annual Bigfoot Days Parade and Festival on Saturday, September 3. Willow Creek is where fog-chilled coast residents go when they need some sun. If you hadn’t already guessed it’s also home to Bigfoot—or at least the idea of Bigfoot, the half human-half ape who has haunted the forests of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest for more than 50 years.

Credit Bob Doran
From the Willow Creek Bigfoot collection.

I’m not one to argue with folks about Bigfoot, especially about whether or not he/she exists—or they exist—based on my own previous experience. (Full disclosure: I haven’t met up with Bigfoot, and am not really a believer.) But as editor of a local weekly way back when, one April Fool’s issue I agreed it would be hilarious to publish a send-up of Bigfoot sightings.

Enter intrepid reporter Greg McKenzie, who stood something like six-foot-six. We sent Greg down to the costume shop for the cheapest, most ill fitting fake-fur ape costume he could find, something really cheesy. Given our tragic budget, the wilds of Bidwell Park became our setting, rather than Humboldt County—where Bigfoot emerged in recent history, in 1958. Ace photographer Ed Aust trailed the ape-man all through the park, getting great shots of him confidently striding out in his Converse hightops; wading into the creek—there, he hiked up his leg fur, to keep it from getting wet—and even sitting on a log, cross-legged, thoughtfully eating Cheetos out of a bag. In the article and photos alike, we took every liberty known to journalist-kind, just to make sure everyone would know immediately that this was a gag. We felt we had succeeded. We did worry that once the paper came out we’d get a raft of nasty phone calls, taking us to task for making fun of Bigfoot like that.

Credit Redwood Coast / Flickr, Creative Commons
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Flickr, Creative Commons
The hairy hominid is right at home in Willow Creek, the town where the modern legend began.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the phone rang for days, desperate calls to share countless “I saw Bigfoot too!” stories. There were letters also. And people came by the office, and stopped us on the street. For weeks. It seemed the real-life Bigfoot testimonials would never end.

So it was a relief for me to find out in 2002 that Bigfoot was dead. Actually, he was never alive, according to the family of Humboldt County’s Ray L. Wallace, despite the “evidence” he produced that proved the creature’s existence. In August of 1958 Wallace had a friend carve huge humanoid feet out of alderwood. Then Ray and his brother Wilbur used the feet to leave impressions in the dirt around contractor Jerry Crew's bulldozer, on a construction site near Bluff Creek. The timing couldn't have been better for such a prank. Rumors of Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) had circulated in the region since 1886, and in the late 1950s there were also tales of Abominable Snowmen in the Himalayas. Wallace's story and photos of his "discovery" made the front page of the Humboldt Times in Eureka, and the rest is history. Wallace kept the hoax alive, his family said, by offering to sell Bigfoot to a Texas millionaire and also filming and photographing the creature in the wild as it ate frogs, elk—even breakfast cereal.

Credit J. Stephen Conn / Flickr, Creative Commons
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Flickr, Creative Commons
Museum of Willow Creek - China Flat: Bigfoot Collection.

Of course there is other evidence, and you can find out about most of it in the Bigfoot annex of Willow Creek’s China Flat Museum. There’s also the Big Foot Golf and Country Club—most feet here aren’t that big—and the Bigfoot Rafting Company, which offers drift fishing too. For more info on the area contact the Willow Creek Chamber of Commerce.

Kim Weir is editor of Up the Road, a nonprofit public-interest journalism project dedicated to sustaining the Northern California story. A long-time member of the Society of American Travel Writers, Weir is also a former NSPR reporter.

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