Bigfoot / Sasquatch
In August 1958, bulldozer operator Jerry Crew found 16-inch footprints at a Humboldt County logging site, and the local paper's story put "Bigfoot" in front of a national audience. On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin shot 59.5 seconds of 16mm film at Bluff Creek.
Field Guide Entry
In August 1958, bulldozer operator Jerry Crew found a trail of giant, 16-inch footprints at a logging site in Humboldt County, California. A local newspaper ran his photo holding a plaster cast of one print, and its story turned the loggers' "Big Foot" into the one word "Bigfoot" for a national audience, though Indigenous oral traditions across the Pacific Northwest describe similar large, hair-covered beings long before that. Reports clustered most densely around the rugged timber country of Northern California's Six Rivers National Forest, where, on October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin shot 59.5 seconds of 16mm film said to show a female Bigfoot striding along Bluff Creek.
The Patterson-Gimlin footage remains the single most-analyzed piece of Bigfoot evidence: frame-by-frame studies have debated musculature, gait, and a visible sagittal crest on the figure's head. Believers point to thousands of footprint casts (some 24 inches long), recorded vocalizations, and a consistent body of witness descriptions (a roughly 7-to-9-foot, heavily built, reddish-brown or black-haired biped) as evidence of an undiscovered North American great ape.
No bone, body, or verified DNA sample has ever surfaced despite over half a century of searching. Mainstream wildlife biologists attribute most sightings to black bears, which can stand and walk briefly on two legs, and treat most footprints as hoaxes. The best-known academic study of the Patterson-Gimlin film concluded that the identity of its subject cannot be judged with any confidence. In 2002, costume maker Philip Morris said he had sold an ape suit to Roger Patterson shortly before the film was shot. Patterson maintained until he passed away in 1972 that the footage was genuine, and Bob Gimlin has stood by it since.
Visiting Information
The actual Patterson-Gimlin film site is a multi-mile hike up remote logging roads and forest trail. It is a serious backcountry trip, not a casual stop. The Bigfoot exhibit at the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum, about 54 road miles south of the film site, is the easier way to see related artifacts and history.
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