Bigfoot

January 03, 2025

© Provided by the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office

Inside the front section of my local newspaper was a USA Today article on the recovery of two men who had gone missing in a remote forested area of southwest Washington State. The bodies were found on December 28 following a three-day search-and-rescue mission that involved 60 people along with the US Coast Guard. The families of the two Portland, Oregon men had reported them missing around 1 am on December 25th. The Facebook page for the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) wrote a post honoring the rescuers who answered the call on Christmas morning. “Creeks had to be crossed, obstacles climbed, and frozen ground navigated, all while maintaining the safety and well-being of the entire team.” SCSO officials said that both deaths appeared to be due to exposure, and that the men were ill-prepared for the weather conditions they faced. The identities of the two men, aged 37 and 59, have not been released. Officials with the SCSO say the two men had gone into the Cascade Range hunting for Sasquatch, or Bigfoot.

When I looked online, I found Sasquatch, also referred to as Bigfoot, is a large, hairy mythical creature said to inhabit forests in the Pacific Northwest. The creature is featured in both American and Canadian folklore, and since the mid-20th century has grown into a cultural icon. Enthusiasts within the pseudoscience of cryptozoology offer various forms of evidence to prove the existence of Bigfoot, including sightings, photographs, video and audio recordings, hair samples, and casts of large footprints. Scientific consensus is that this is a combination of misidentification, folklore, and hoax, rather than a living animal. Sightings often describe Bigfoot as a large, muscular, and bipedal human or ape-like creature covered in black, dark brown, or dark reddish hair. The estimated height is roughly 6 to 9 feet (1.8 to 2.7 m), but some descriptions have Bigfoot standing as tall as 10 to15 feet (3.0 to 4.6 m). Common descriptions include broad shoulders, no visible neck, and long arms, which skeptics attribute to the misidentification of a bear standing upright. Folklorists trace Bigfoot to a combination of factors and sources, including folk tales and indigenous cultures. Examples of similar folk tales of wild, hair-covered humanoids exist throughout the world.

The origin of the name Bigfoot began in 1958, when a bulldozer operator (Jerry Crew) for a logging company in Humboldt County, California, discovered a set of large, 16 inches (41 cm) human-like footprints in the mud in the Six Rivers National Forest. When Crew informed his coworkers many also claimed to have seen similar tracks on previous job sites and the men began using the word “Bigfoot” to describe the creature. After observing more of these footprints, Crew contacted Andrew Genzoli of the Humboldt Times newspaper. Genzoli interviewed lumber workers and wrote articles about the mysterious footprints, introducing the name “Bigfoot” in relation to the tracks and the local tales. A plaster cast of the footprints was made, and Crew appeared holding one of the casts on the front page of the newspaper on October 6, 1958. The story spread rapidly as Genzoli was contacted by major media outlets including the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and Bigfoot became the widespread reference to the creature leaving massive footprints in Northern California.

THOUGHTS: While Northern California is arguably the most popular locale for Bigfoot Lore there have been countless sightings up and down the Cascade Range. Skamania County where the two bodies were found has its own Bigfoot tradition. By the 1960’s, there had been so many Bigfoot sightings that Skamania County commissioners passed a law making it illegal to kill, harm, or shoot at a Sasquatch. The act of searching for the creature is referred to as “Squatching”, popularized by the Animal Planet series, Finding Bigfoot. Whether reality, myth, or hoax, Bigfoot is alive and well in the American Northwest. Act for all. Change is coming and it starts with you.