The Bigfoot Highway
Klamath down to Piercy through the redwoods and the Trinity backcountry, taking in the town that made itself the front door to the whole Bigfoot business.
4 stops · 2 days · California · roughly 71 miles point to point
See the whole route and everything odd beside it
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Every one of the 4 places in the index. Plan a route and the map narrows to what's actually near it.
The tracks that produced the word Bigfoot were found at Bluff Creek in August 1958, on a logging road in the mountains east of here. There is nothing at the site and the roads in are rough. This route goes to the places that grew up around it instead.
Klamath first
A fifty-foot Paul Bunyan and an equally large Babe stand at the entrance to Trees of Mystery on US-101, and have since 1946. They are not Bigfoot, but they are the same instinct in an older form: build something enormous beside a road through the redwoods and people will pull over.
Then east to Willow Creek
An hour and a half inland on SR-299, and the reason to make the trip.
Willow Creek decided in the 1960s that it was Bigfoot country and has never wavered. The China Flat Museum keeps a serious Bigfoot collection — casts, newspaper archive, material from the people who were actually there — and the town carries several carved figures, including the Gonzalez statue.
The Bigfoot Daze festival runs every September if you want the town at full volume.
Read the collection carefully and you will notice something the souvenir shops do not advertise: the 1958 tracks were almost certainly made with carved wooden feet, and Ray Wallace's family said so after he died in 2002. The museum does not hide this, which is to its credit.
Finish at Piercy
The world's tallest free-standing redwood chainsaw carving, on the Avenue of the Giants end of the route. Chainsaw carving is the local art form up here for a straightforward reason — there was a great deal of redwood and a great many people with saws.
Practical
SR-299 between Arcata and Willow Creek is a proper mountain road: slow, winding, and no place to be in a hurry or in fog. Two days lets you drive it in daylight both ways.
The museum keeps seasonal hours and is partly volunteer-run, so check before building a day around it.
The Route
Willow Creek-China Flat Museum & Bigfoot Collection
Willow Creek, California
A seasonal local-history museum holding one of the area's most important Bigfoot collections: footprint casts, photographs, historical documents and material from researcher Bob Titmus. It sits a short distance from Bluff Creek, where the Patterson-Gimlin film was shot in 1967.
Museum Bigfoot Statue
Willow Creek, California
An outdoor Bigfoot statue at the Community Commons, alongside the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum and the visitor information point. Another easy photo stop while working through the town's Bigfoot landmarks.
Gonzalez Bigfoot Statue
Willow Creek, California
A Bigfoot-themed roadside artwork in Willow Creek, California's self-proclaimed Bigfoot Country. A quick photo stop near the centre of town and the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum rather than a full attraction.
World's Tallest Free Standing Redwood Chainsaw Carving
Piercy, California
This approximately 44-foot carving was cut upright from a dead redwood at Confusion Hill, making it a freestanding chainsaw carving rather than a totem carved horizontally and raised later. Confusion Hill says the carving itself took about three months to make; its exact year is not well documented, and travelers now find it in the attraction’s parking area at Piercy.
2 stops on this route are no longer in the index and have been left out.