Random Notes from Texas: The Bigfoot Exhibition

As Craig Woolheater said to Skeptical Inquirer’s Ben Radford and me, after circling for the third time to get a drive-by view of the Alamo, "Now, we can remember the Alamo!"

To me, the thing I think that I will most remember about San Antonio is the quite impressive Bigfoot exhibition that Craig has stimulated via curator Willie Mendez at the University of Texas San Antonio’s Institute of Texan Cultures.

As you walk into the darkened beginning section of the huge display, you are taken down a path through a recreated nighttime scene in the Big Thicket. Hanging Spanish moss, tree trunks, and animal sounds surround you. Both Ben and I got to the trail’s end, but were called back by Craig’s wife, Marcy, because we had missed the star of the entryway – Bigfoot. Craig’s comment was on target: “It looks like an old tree in the background there, guys, and you two missed it completely.”

Going into the main hall of the Bigfoot exhibition, one is immediately struck by how, well, “museum-quality” it appears. There are display cases filled with replica skulls of Gigantopithecus and gorilla, the famed British Columbian carved stone head and foot bowl of Sasquatch, a Chehalis First Nations Sasquatch mask from British Columbia, and descriptive panels all around discussing hairy hominoids.

Along the outer edge of the exhibition, the copies (negative and positive) of the Skookum cast appear weightlessly attached to one wall. Below and to the left, are case after case of Bigfoot track casts. Thanks to Rick Noll and Jeff Meldrum, these displays filled out quickly with footprint plaster replicas from the Pacific Northwest. There is an example of a Texas cast and mold, as well, on exhibit.

Over to the right in a corner, sits the re-creation of a small part of Woolheater’s collection of Bigfoot books, magazines, figurines and models, which gives a popular culture feel to the exhibit.

All in all, I was struck by the time, effort, expense and credibility that went into curating this display of artifacts here in San Antonio.

Craig Woolheater is working hard to keep the contained exhibition alive in a forthcoming museum of its own in Jefferson, Texas, which will be a welcome addition to the growing number of such grassroots sites, for example, at the Bigfoot museums in Willow Creek & Santa Cruz, California, at the two separate Nessie collections located next to each other on the shores of Loch Ness, within the Mothman Museum at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and at the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

For one information on the lectures and exhibition, which ends in July 2006, please click here.

Loren Coleman 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.

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