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May 25, 2022 · There are two “hunts” planned for this year’s festival, including one through the Allegheny National Forest.
Apr 8, 2022 · A Martian-made museum installation exploring the Martian's hunt for Bigfoot and subsequent discovery of life on earth. We loved the idea of looking at Bigfoot through a completely different perspective, even if that perspective was made-up.
Jul 21, 2022 · This remote valley 130km east of Vancouver conjures an ancient land filled with mystery and possibility, and some believe it's home to the world's most famous cryptid – Sasquatch, Canada's...
- Lisa Kadane
- Overview
- Connecting with nature
- Preserving the land
- Myth and magic
It may sound kitschy, but traveling to ‘Sasquatch country’ provides a chance to see some of America’s most vivid, far-flung places.
To skeptics, Bigfoot sightings in North American forests are evidence of a collective delusion.
To cryptozoologists—people who search for mythical creatures, including Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster and Latin America’s chupacabra—they represent a nearly universal desire to understand the unknown. Whether people believe in the beasts or not, trying to track them down (“going bigfooting,” as enthusiasts say) offers an excellent opportunity to explore America’s off-the-beaten path places.
“I’ve looked for Sasquatches in 46 states and five continents,” says Cliff Barackman, a Bigfoot investigator and the owner of the North American Bigfoot Center. “The Sierra Nevada, the tundra of Alaska, the craggy river bottoms of South Dakota—[Sasquatches] live in wonderful, wild areas.”
Although investigators have yet to prove Bigfoot’s existence, organizations such as the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) compile and map alleged Bigfoot sightings, investigating each report and labeling it based on its credibility and location. Their research often serves as a guide, bringing travelers to regions far less traveled.
From the forests of the Pacific Northwest to the remote pine flatwoods in central Florida, destinations where an elusive ape-like creature has reportedly been spotted are emblematic of the diversity and breadth of America’s beautiful places.
Building a connection with natural spaces might be the most tangible, positive outcome of people “going bigfooting,” says Cindy Caddell, an archaeologist for the U.S. Forest Service and an investigator and expedition leader for BFRO.
Left: Travelers take a ferry across the Salish Sea near Washington State.
Right: An oversized footprint is spray-painted on a tree in Oregon’s Siuslaw National Forest. The region is known for its reported Sasquatch sightings, the earliest ones dating back more than a century.
Left: “Going bigfooting” can lead travelers to some of the most scenic landscapes in the U.S., such as the wildflower-filled forest around Washington’s Mount Rainer.
Right: Standing 178 feet tall, the Duncan Cedar, located on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, is the largest western red cedar in the U.S. and second largest in the world.
“It’s about getting into nature with like minded people to enjoy the outdoors and see the countryside,” Caddell says. “And who’s to say there’s not an undiscovered primate out there?”
Searching for an ape-like creature not only encourages travelers to experience wild open spaces but also motivates them to become stewards of the land. Three different counties in Oregon and Washington State have designated land as “Sasquatch Protection and Refuge Areas” (regions where hunting for Bigfoot is prohibited) due to the possibility of the creature’s existence. The most recent designation passed in Washington State’s Grays Harbor County in April.
Although these resolutions aren’t legally binding, the strategy of leveraging charismatic creatures to protect habitats is a common practice, according to conservation scientists. Organizations often use well-known mammals, such as the gray wolf, to preserve large swathes of land—thereby protecting hundreds of smaller, obscure species that rely on the same habitat.
“Psychologically, it helps to have iconic species as the focus,” says Gretchen Daily, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “We need the billions of microbes in soil to make our immune systems function, but no one is going to get fired up over those.”
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The Edge of Existence initiative promotes bizarre and unusual threatened species in an effort to build public support for conservation. In 2015, a trail camera set up to capture Bigfoot instead got a glimpse of a Humboldt marten—a small, weasel-like forest creature previously thought to be extinct. In part because of that evidence, the marten was finally listed as threatened in 2020.
Left: The sun sets behind Three Fingered Jack, a mountain in Oregon’s Central Cascades.
Searching for Bigfoot allows adventurers to connect with something bigger than themselves and believe there is still something magical and unknown about America’s wild spaces.
“Bigfoot preserves some of the wonder of childhood, and some of the magic of the 18th and 19th centuries of exploration," says Peter Dendle, a professor of folklore at Penn State Mont Alto.
Before the 19th century, when stories about the mysterious ape man began circulating in the American West, a rich oral tradition of Sasquatch stories among Indigenous communities tells of a nearly supernatural being lurking in the woods. In some legends, Sasquatch is an object of fear, at other times a benevolent force—but the stories are always reverential.
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Bigfoot stories, at their core, offer a pathway toward a paradigm shift in our relationship with the natural world. In both childhood and earlier centuries, humans tended to operate under the belief that the natural world was infinitely vast. Part of that belief absolves us of any responsibility to act as responsible stewards of the land.
“Spending time in the woods connects you with something you forgot you had a connection to,” Barackman says. “We can vote to save public land, finding a balance between the needs of society and the needs of wildlife, and by doing that, we’ll accidentally be helping ourselves.”
Oct 12, 2022 · The expedition will take place from Oct. 20 to 23. “The previous expedition to this area was a rare achievement among bigfoot expeditions,” reads a description of the expedition on the...
The team returns to the Olympic Peninsula with a plan to lure out a Bigfoot by releasing primate pheromones. But after Ronny and Mireya see something watching them, and Russell is blindsided, it becomes clear -- the hunters are now the hunted.
Oct 31, 2022 · Parts of Leominster, including the state forest are home to sightings of Bigfoot and other unusual activity. One man has been on the hunt for decades. His name is Ronny Le Blanc.
