The Pacific Northwest may be your best chance of finding Bigfoot — but there’s one California town that’s truly obsessed with the mythical beast.
Washington, with 713 sightings all-time, leads the way with the most Bigfoot reports, according to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. California was next most common at 461 and Florida was third at 339.
While the legend of Bigfoot has lived on across the US for decades, residents of Willow Creek, California, take it a step further.
The small town of just 1,700 people has been gripped by the big-sole phenomenon since 1967, when the most famous and most investigated ‘sighting’ took place in the nearby Six Rivers National Forest.
Over the years, conspiracy tourists have flocked to Willow Creek’s array of Bigfoot-themed attractions, restaurants and museums, with some even going on expeditions into the wilderness in hopes of catching a glimpse of the elusive creature.
While many may turn up their noses at the town’s obsession, the legend has put it on the map amid thousands of sightings across the country from Bigfoot believers.
A huge 25-foot Bigfoot statue stands outside the Willow Creek – China Flat Museum, the small town’s dedicated space for its sasquatch obsession
The museum contains a variety of Bigfoot ‘evidence’, including footprint deposits said to have been made by the big-soled creature
Willow Creek’s fit with the myth has led to numerous attractions, including the annual ‘Bigfoot Daze’ festival held each July.
The town, which bills itself as the ‘Bigfoot Capital of the World’, is dominated by the myth, including hosting the annual ‘Bigfoot Daze’ festival every July. For a number of years the local paper was even called ‘Bigfoot Valley News’.
Nearby Humboldt State University offers a course on ‘Intro to Bigfoot Studies’, and maniacal learning has even seen murders in the local area attributed – except by authorities – to Bigfoot.
The main hub of its tourist economy is the Willow Creek – China Flat Museum (named after the town’s former nickname), a space dedicated to the sasquatch where attendees are greeted with a towering 25-foot statue of the animal .
Inside, a series of footprint deposits purporting to be made by Bigfoot fill an entire room, including one with a sign that reads: ‘THIS IS AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION OF A ‘BIGFOOT PRINT’ MADE IN 1958.. . BIGFOOT IS NOT A HOAX.’
For those unconvinced by the exhibits, the 1967 footage that shot Willow Creek to conspiracy fame is also given its own display.
The grainy three-minute movie was shot by adventurers Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, showing a lumbering, gorilla-like monster moving through the woods in nearby Bluff Creek, in the Six Rivers National Forest.
Known as the ‘Patterson-Gimlin’ footage, it has become infamous over the years as one of the first times Bigfoot was ‘caught on camera’.
In 1967, the clearest footage of the animal was captured in the Six Rivers National Forest, California, showing a lumbering, gorilla-like animal roaming the woods.
Explorers Bob Gimlin and Roger Patterson were seen comparing footprint deposits they believed were made by Bigfoot in 1967
The lack of verifiable, non-shaky evidence in the half century since then is often pointed out by the non-believers, a fact that does little to shake the faith of those who flood Willow Creek each year.
Bigfoot’s history in California appears to date back to 1886, when the first reported sightings of a furry human-monster hybrid surfaced in Crescent City, about 100 miles north of Willow Creek.
In early newspaper clippings, reporters detailed accounts of ‘wild men in the woods’, although conflicting accounts saw horrified locals as anywhere from six to eight feet tall and weighing up to a ton.
The creature seemingly went into hiding for decades around the turn of the 20th century, before West Coast explorers began spreading rumors of the beast—or at least its footprints—in the 1930s.
A large Bigfoot statue in Crescent City, California – the site of some of the earliest reports of the mythical reptile
In 1958, the folklore took a turn when Humboldt Times reporter Andrew Genzoli wrote an article about ‘large footprints found on wilderness road’ – a publication that gave birth to the term ‘Bigfoot’.
The ‘Patterson-Gimlin’ footage was shot nine years later, in what many consider to be the first step towards a thriving Bigfoot economy.
“Willow Creek is the gateway to Bigfoot Country,” said Bryce Johnson, host of the paranormal podcast ‘Bigfoot Collectors Club’ and Discovery’s ‘Expedition Bigfoot’ SFGate.
‘To get to Bluff Creek, you have to come through Willow Creek, and that’s a lot of how those guys like Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin got through. That’s where they stayed and ate, and then they packed horses and went into the woods and camped.’
Guided expeditions are conducted across the country, where Bigfoot believers scour woodlands in states such as California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
However, as a lack of evidence continues to plague the mythical beast, Johnson acknowledged that the Patterson-Gimlin footage “stands still to this day, even today when everyone has a cell phone, the best footage there is.”
For those hoping to top it, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization offers a variety of seemingly-sold-out guided expeditions.
Upcoming trips advertised on their website includes trips to forests in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Tennessee – the latter undertaken by explorer Lori Wade who seems to ‘get action almost every time’.
The organization promises to ‘bring people to areas where they will encounter Bigfoots at night’, based on ‘thousands of sighting reports over 15 years’.
For those still unconvinced, comments from participants across America included New Yorker Ken Fitzpatrick, an explorer who said his ‘expectations weren’t high’, found himself ‘quite surprised when we finally found tracks’.
“It was the first time in four years that I’ve been researching this topic that I’ve heard one,” added Mark Harrison, a Virginia resident. The organization also includes a snippet of the sounds of the sasquatch, eerily similar to the sounds made by owls.
‘It was a real learning experience for me. I was very impressed with the high quality and the knowledgeable individuals. This BF mystery will only be solved by a team effort like this,’ concluded Row Cowan of Bakersfield, California.