By Steve Rubenstein
July 12, 2016
Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, Special To The Chronicle
A crossing sign in Willow Creek, heart of Bigfoot Country.
He’s the real deal. He’s the guy on the shirts. He’s the guy the Bigfoot Motel was named after and the Bigfoot Steakhouse was named after and Bigfoot Books was named after. A foot doctor in town even named his office Bigfoot Podiatry. That should settle it.
Try to have a little respect. Everybody in this town of 1,710 has seen Bigfoot or knows somebody who has.
Everybody except you.
Deep in the Humboldt County woods, the loggers are mostly gone. The miners are mostly gone. Fishermen are growing as elusive as fish. These days, the town’s two main industries seem to be nurturing marijuana groves and nurturing the equally hallucinogenic legacy of the giant ape who is the Western Hemisphere’s answer to the Loch Ness monster (who works just as hard as Bigfoot, one hemisphere to the east).
“No one,” said Steve Streufert, “has ever proven that he doesn’t exist.”
Streufert, the proprietor of Bigfoot Books, is the closest thing in Willow Creek to an authority on the town’s non-smokable cash crop. Bigfoot doesn’t reside only in Humboldt County, of course. Bigfoot has been seen in all 50 states by people who are inclined to see things like Bigfoot.
Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, Special To The Chronicle
Steve Streufert, owner of Bigfoot Books in Willow Creek. “No one has ever proven that he doesn’t exist,” he says.
Steve Streufert, owner of Bigfoot Books in Willow Creek. “No one has ever proven that he doesn’t exist,” he says. Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, Special To The Chronicle
But Willow Creek resides in the center of the Bigfoot vortex, based largely on the existence of a grainy minute-long film purportedly depicting Bigfoot, shot in 1967 just down the road from Willow Creek by a former rodeo cowboy named Roger Patterson (whose previous venture was peddling a book about Bigfoot that wasn’t selling enough copies).
The clip, which shows a furry black ape strolling along a backwoods riverbank, went viral before things of its kind went viral. To many viewers, it depicts exactly what a genuine Bigfoot would look like if he was wearing a rented gorilla suit from the costume store.
At the bookstore, not far from the center of town, Streufert offers hundreds of Bigfoot titles — perhaps the largest Bigfoot collection in these parts. There are books on other subjects, too, for those customers who insist on reading about something else.
There's a lot of Bigfoot stuff in Willow Creek CA and there may even be Bigfoot.
Media: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com / San Francisco Chronicle
Streufert calls Bigfoot a “crypto-monster” and a “mystery” and an “aura” and a lot of other names that he doesn’t mean to be insulting. He has never seen the fellow and seems more fascinated by the town’s Bigfoot industry than by Bigfoot.
But a few years ago, he and some friends got the idea to install motion-sensitive cameras in the woods at prime Bigfoot viewing locations. Each spring, he and his friends gather up the cameras’ video cards and inspect the images for Bigfoot. They call it the Bluff Creek Film Site Project.
Looking for Bigfoot on his computer screen, he says, has been a great hobby. Over the past five years, the cameras have captured cougars, owls, woodpeckers, deer, a rare Humboldt marten and two very amorous black bears who were intent on starting a family.
Hundreds of Bigfoot seekers have watched that clip over and over, which is not technically bestiality because both participants in the video were bears. On the other hand, Streufert said with a sigh, his five years of hidden-camera wilderness videos have turned up no images of Bigfoot.
“That doesn’t prove he isn’t real, of course,” said Streufert, who quite sensibly maintains an open mind about the critter he named his store after. “You can’t prove a negative. Bigfoot could be hiding behind the next tree. The odds are against it, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
Bigfoot could also be hiding out at the nearby Early Bird restaurant and fishing tackle shop, where proprietor LeeAnn Brander spends every morning baking something for hungry bipeds. It’s a 10-inch bun that the restaurant uses for its Bigfoot Burger, which has got a pound of hamburger, bacon, cheese and other things Bigfoot would like to eat for $8.95.
Brander, who shapes each toe of each bun individually before popping it in the oven, said she has not herself seen Bigfoot, only the bun. Her father-in-law has not seen Bigfoot. But her father-in-law did meet someone 40 years ago who said he saw Bigfoot, most likely.
“He smelled bad,” Brander said. “That’s what the man told my father-in-law.”
The Bigfoot Motel (doubles $88) has a large metal cage in the parking lot suitable for confining Bigfoot, should any motel patron capture him. In the meantime, guests are welcome to step into the cage and pose for pictures.
“We used to have a Bigfoot robot in the cage,” said motel manager Esther Ong. “It broke.”
Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, Special To The Chronicle
A bigfoot statue at the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum.
Although the robot is gone, the town features two genuine Bigfoot statues that, in keeping with the mysterious nature of the big guy, look nothing like each other. (Sadly, the left foot of one Bigfoot has been pulled apart by souvenir seekers unable to locate a more viable specimen.) The western statue has an official plaque next to it declaring that Bigfoot’s footprints have been “found and inspected by large numbers of people.”
The woods around Willow Creek turn out to be overrun with footprints left by Bigfoot, much as the cornfields of the Midwest are awash in crop circles left by UFOs. The small Bigfoot museum at the west end of town features display cases full of plaster casts of Bigfoot prints — there are 31 of them all together. If there were only one or two, said head docent Terri Castner, that might be different. But 31 genuine casts of what could be genuine footprints is a lot.
Photo: Max Whittaker/Prime, Special To The Chronicle
Signs of Bigfoot in Willow Creek include a print in a parking lot.
The museum gift shop does a brisk business selling maps. In Hollywood, you buy $10 maps to movie star homes. In Willow Creek, you buy $10 maps to Bigfoot sightings. The Bigfoot Sighting Map lists 350 locations, each marked with a numbered circle, identifying where a genuine sighting took place along the Bigfoot Scenic Byway. The idea is to buy a map, drive the highway and see if you can add to the total. The Chronicle bought a copy.
“Keep your eyes open,” said Caster. “Use the map. You could see Bigfoot at any time.”
The 147-mile stretch of the Bigfoot Scenic Byway, also known as state Highway 96, meanders through the Hoopa Indian reservation and through Six Rivers and Klamath national forests. It turns out to be among the most beautiful drives in California, following the gorge of the Klamath River for mile after mile with little traffic to scare Bigfoot away.
The U.S. Forest Service maintains only that Bigfoot Scenic Byway is scenic, which it is, and not that Bigfoot Scenic Byway is home to Bigfoot, which is up for the motorist to discover.
Map in hand, The Chronicle set out the other morning. Most of the sightings suggest that Bigfoot is an ill-tempered lecher who has a thing for stealing livestock and throwing things. At mile 8. the map says, a resident “heard loud noises in a pigpen and awoke the next morning to find Bigfoot tracks” in 1972.
At mile 12, a resident “had chickens stolen and saw a huge figure” in 2006. Elsewhere on the byway, said the map, Bigfoot swiped melons, shook parked cars, threw rocks at hunters, stole a deer, peeked in a cabin window at some sleeping women and heaved tennis balls.
The Chronicle, per instructions, kept its eyes open. It saw a goat and a crow and many squirrels. Also the early morning sun shimmering on the Klamath. Hawks glided along the treetops, keeping their eyes open, too. It was a great day to look for Bigfoot.
Bigfoot Scenic Byway, which begins in Willow Creek, finally comes to an end at Interstate 5, in Siskiyou County. A byway — the slower, country cousin of a highway — bears no relation at all to an interstate. California could use more scenic byways and fewer interstates. Californians could use more time to drive on them.
After 147 miles of looking, The Chronicle found no proof that Bigfoot did not exist. On the other hand, there was plenty of hard evidence that, if Bigfoot ever does decide to show his face, he’s found himself the right neck of the woods.
Freelance writer Anna Rubenstein
contributed to this story.
Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.
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