Spooky Season has arrived!
The wind is chilled, the leaves are changing, and through this period of transition, we find a reinvigorated sense of adventure.
Happy Campers RV Rentals is here to inspire and encourage your new found Fall feelings! Let’s dig into the spirit of the season together, as we take you on a journey to some of the best Spooky Roadside Stops on the West Coast! It’s time to pack up your costumes, consolidate your candy, and hit the open road on a Halloween destination vacation.
The third destination on our tour of Spooky Roadside Stops features one of North America’s most popular mythological (or real?) figures. Welcome to the Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton, California!
"Our collection includes exhibits of local history, tied in with local Bigfoot sightings, Popular Culture as it relates to the public view of Bigfoot, and actual evidence in the form of plaster foot and handprints along with a detailed exhibit on the Patterson-Gimlin Film."
Table of Contents
A Brief History of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum
Michael Rugg and Paula Yarr are co-founders of the Bigfoot Discovery Project (BDP). The BDP accepts the subject of the Patterson/Gimlin Film as the type specimen for the Pacific Coast Bigfoot or Sasquatch and seeks to create a dialogue about the implications of the impending “discovery of Bigfoot” by conventional Western science. The Museum opened in June of 2006 with the purpose of educating the public about the probability of Bigfoot and the current thoughts as to its habits and its place in the natural world.
As a child, Rugg spent many weekends and holidays on fishing, camping, and hunting trips with his parents throughout central and northern California (his father once owned a lumber mill in Garberville). His first Bigfoot encounter may have happened on one of those occasions. He has been collecting information and artifacts while studying unknown bipedal primates since the early ’50s when the first photos of Yeti tracks on Mt Everes
t appeared in Western newspapers.
“There are various wild man myths from all over the world,” says Joshua Blu Buhs, author of Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend. In western Canada, the Sts’ailes First Nation have the “Sasq’ets,” the supposed origin of the word “Sasquatch.”
After 50 years of pondering the question and ten years of kidding about opening a “Bigfoot Museum for his retirement”—with Paula’s encouragement and help—he has decided to bring his research, library, and collection together with his and others’ talents to create images, words, music, and exhibits that will educate and entertain the public during their discovery of Bigfoot. Thus the BDP was manifested in the form of this website and the Bigfoot Discovery Museum. Soon after opening, they found out from local witnesses that there are still bigfoot in Santa Cruz County and time spent in the woods has provided plenty of evidence to establish the reality of Santa Cruz Sasquatch!
Bigfoot Quick Facts
- 1Bigfoot's Origin StoryBigfoot, also commonly referred to as Sasquatch, is an ape-like creature that is said to inhabit the forests of North America. Often found within Canadian and American folklore, evidence of the existence of Bigfoot includes anecdotal sightings as well as video and audio recordings, photographs, and casts of large footprints. Bigfoot has become an icon within the fringe subculture of cryptozoology and an enduring element of popular culture.
- 2Common Bigfoot DescriptionsThousands of people have claimed to have seen a Bigfoot, which is most often described as a large, muscular, bipedal ape-like creature covered in black, dark brown, or dark reddish hair. Some descriptions have the creatures standing as tall as 10 to 15 feet! A pungent, foul smelling odor is sometimes associated with reports of the creatures, commonly described as similar to rotten eggs. The face of a Bigfoot is often described as human-like, with a flat nose. Common descriptions also include broad shoulders, no visible neck, and long arms. The eyes are commonly described as dark in color and have been alleged to "glow" yellow or red at night.
- 3Tale As Old As TimeBigfoot legends existed long before there was a single name for the creature. These stories differed in their details both regionally and between families in the same community. On the Tule River Indian Reservation in California, petroglyphs created by a group of Yokuts at a site called Painted Rock are alleged by some to depict a group of Bigfoots called "the Family". The local tribespeople call the largest of the glyphs "Hairy Man" and they are estimated to be between 500 and 1000 years old.