August 3, 2007
During this 40th anniversary of the filming of Bigfoot at Bluff Creek (October 20, 1967), I’ll drop in at various points to note some significant milestone dates on the calendar. For today, let’s look at the pivotal date of August 3rd.
The October 1958 tracks of the Bluff Creek’s Bigfoot became famous because Jerry Crew took a cast of one of them into Eureka to show the newspaper. But the 1958 Bigfoot events began in August.
Crew was a new hire that spring with the construction company. The men were getting serious about taking down trees and creating the new roadway into the woods. Crew, a man deeply involved with his family, church, and community activities, would drive home every weekend.
Ten more miles are cut into the forest. The route they are building is angling upward across a face of a mountain. On the 3rd of August 1958, Wilbur Wallace would tell investigators later in the month, that something threw a 700-pound spare tire to the bottom of a deep gully at the Bluff Creek worksite.
On August 22, at quitting time, Jerry Crew is the last to depart. He is a fourth of a mile deeper in the woods than anyone else. He then drives the two-and-a-half hours home to Salyer for the weekend.
When he returns to work on Wednesday, August 27th, Jerry Crew discovers giant manlike footprints around his bulldozer. He is so upset–even though his first thought is that they are someone putting a prank — that he finally decides to tell Wilbur Wallace, the foreman, and brother of the contractor, Ray Wallace.Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America, NY: Paraview Pocket – Simon and Schuster, 2003, page 69.
During most Augusts from 1958 throughout the end of the 1960s, routine Bigfoot activity was reported from the Bluff Creek area, the Hoopa Indian Reservation, and in Hoopa Valley, northwest of the little village of Willow Creek, California. What happened in August usually would indicate there would be more sightings in September and October; please see, Bigfoot Casebook Updated for individual sightings.
The entire modern era of Bigfoot allegedly began today in 1958 in a little corner of wilderness in California. The end results would be a new name spread widely by the media in October 1958, and a formidable piece of film in October 1967.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under Bigfoot, Cryptomundo Exclusive, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Evidence, Eyewitness Accounts, Media Appearances, Photos, Sasquatch, Year In Review