When Assembly Bill 666 was introduced on Feb. 14 of this year, it was a placeholder — what’s called a spot bill, filed to beat a legislative deadline and meant to be amended at a later date.
In the tradition of California spot bills that are largely inside jokes, Assemblymember Chris Rogers and his staff made it a reference to the North Coast’s favorite mythological creature, Bigfoot.
“There’s a long and storied history with spot bills in California,” Rogers (D-Santa Rosa) told the Times-Standard. “John Burton, who used to be a state legislator and went on to be the Democratic party chair, would every year introduce a spot bill that made being poor a felony, as a joke. …
“And we thought that it would be especially funny [to introduce a spot bill regarding Bigfoot] because typically spot bills disappear. We thought we would go over-the-top with AB 666 and that down the road if we needed to, we could amend the bill and tell people, ‘Bigfoot disappears; Bigfoot’s elusive.’”
So Rogers introduced the bill designating Bigfoot as “the official state cryptid.”
He could not have foreseen the ensuing weeks of headlines as his inside joke began to attract media attention at the regional, state and national level.
AB 666 even drew the attention of “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert, who quipped: “Well, that’s strange and completely unnecessary. California already has a mystical furry creature — Randy Quaid.”
“Even before Stephen Colbert talked about it on his show and did a big thing about it, we already were getting Bigfoot enthusiasts who were reaching out, who were really excited by this bill,” Rogers said. “In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense because things are so tense, especially when you talk about national politics.
“People are worried about the future, legitimately worried about what’s happening … and this bill at least provides this moment of levity within politics that has sort of this shared culture for the North Coast folks to be able to rally around. It has provided this opportunity for us to have a little fun while also being serious about some of the other issues that we’re working on.”
Bigfoot is serious business, though, to many communities north of the Redwood Curtain.
“If you look at it from a tourism perspective, it really is drawing attention — at least in Sacramento — to the North Coast,” Rogers said.
For now, the placeholder text remains. A bill to designate a state cryptid is not without precedent: Washington legislation to enshrine Sasquatch was never signed; Wyoming lawmakers have tried three times to raise the jackalope to official status.
And AB 666 is also not the first time the Times-Standard has encountered Bigfoot legislation. In 1967, the year in which the famous Patterson-Gimlin film purported to capture Bigfoot on camera, the Times-Standard printed an opinion piece calling on state legislators to “legalize Bigfoot.”
“The idea of legislating on something which may not exist may appear to be a little far out, but our lawmakers have done a few far-out things in the past, such as making the theft of a citrus fruit or an artichoke a felony in California. … We are now proposing that Senator Randolph Collier and Assemblyman Frank Belotti, in the January convening of the State Legislature, introduce another home-area bill — one to ‘legalize’ Bigfoot.”
Andrew Genzoli, a writer with the Times-Standard’s predecessor the Humboldt Times, first coined the phrase “Bigfoot” in October 1958.
In an article titled “Giant footprints puzzle residents along Trinity River,” Genzoli retold the experiences of Jerry Crew, who famously encountered large humanoid footprints in the Bluff Creek area while working on a road construction crew.
Crew presented Genzoli with a plaster cast of the footprints, 18 inches long and 7 inches wide.
Ten days later after Genzoli’s article, however, colleague Bill Chambers would cast doubt on Crew’s story after learning that Crew’s fellow construction worker Ray Wallace had perhaps fabricated the footprints. The debunking, however, didn’t stymie interest in the newly named Bigfoot.
“That is the day Bigfoot was born; Mr. Genzoli named it Bigfoot,” said Eric Nelson, a volunteer at the Willow Creek China Flat Museum and a retired law enforcement professional.
“Before that Native Americans had regional names, and there were regional names throughout the country — Woodbugger, Missouri Mudman, in the Pacific Northwest, Hairy Man, Creek Devil, Boss of the Woods, Ridge Walker — a number of names and associations for some sort of creature that was large in the woods. But that day in 1958, they put it all together into Bigfoot.”
Located at the junction of highways 299 and 96 — known to many as the “Bigfoot Highway” — the China Flat Museum hosts a world-renowned Bigfoot collection. The museum is often called a Bigfoot museum, though it is a general history museum with an outsized Bigfoot wing.
In 1988, Nelson said, realizing that the region’s matriarchs and patriarchs were passing away and taking with them the relics of the community’s rich Native American and early-colonial history, Willow Creek residents founded a general history museum. Though it contained some Bigfoot memorabilia, it wasn’t until nearly a decade later when Bob Titmus, a longtime Bigfoot investigator, bequeathed his estate to the museum that its Bigfoot collection was born.
Nelson said that visitors to the museum are all ages and come from around the world. He pointed to the television show “Finding Bigfoot” as a recent point of encounter for many young people.
“I think it’s generational. Every generation it seems to get legs again,” Nelson said. “A friend of mine who has a shop in Willow Creek that has some Bigfoot memorabilia was noticing that he was having grown adult (visitors), parents that were influenced by ‘In Search of …’ with Leonard Nimoy, and their children were motivated by or inspired by ‘Finding Bigfoot.’
“We have so many YouTube creators that come through. There are maybe four or five individual YouTube creators that filmed Bluff Creek content over the summer. It’s continual. I had a gentleman come and interview me last year, Groovy Gavin, a YouTube cryptid investigator, and it was just an average interview, but it’s been seen 597,000 times.”
Shannon Hughes, president of the Willow Creek Chamber of Commerce Board, told the Times-Standard that being a Bigfoot believer isn’t really optional for the community’s 1,700 residents.
“You can’t really live in Willow Creek if you’re not a believer,” Hughes said jokingly. “And if you’re not, you keep it to yourself.”
Hughes said that the community’s proximity to Bluff Creek and to state Route 96 place it firmly at the epicenter of 20th century Bigfoot history, and its business community has enthusiastically embraced that position.
“Willow Creek really is the Bigfoot Capital of the World — not just because of the local history but because of how much we have decorated the town in everything Bigfoot. And of course, there is Bigfoot Daze.”
This summer, Willow Creek is slated to host its 63rd annual Bigfoot Daze festival. The block party, scheduled for July 12, will feature a variety of vendors, live music and the community’s famous Bigfoot-themed parade. This year’s event will also feature a new venue in downtown Willow Creek as its previous venue Veteran’s Park undergoes renovations.
“I think anyone who looks at the cultural impacts of these cryptids — and that is what it is; it’s a cultural impact that they have as a driver of local culture — (knows that) Bigfoot, by far takes the cake,” Rogers said. “Bigfoot is the one that everyone knows across the world … and in California, we all know that Bigfoot comes from Willow Creek.”
Rogers said that, while it was coincidental that the introduction of AB 666 was sandwiched between two bills that work to advance renewable energy in the North Coast, it was not an accident in the sense that Bigfoot has an outsize relationship to the region and its ecology, and protecting those are important parts of his legislative agenda.
Nelson also said that it’s no coincidence that Bigfoot calls the Klamath mountains its home.
“Bigfoot, to me, represents nature and how powerful and elusive it is — and how fragile and resilient — it’s all those things. And that’s what our mountain range is — because it’s so biodiverse; we have 18 conifer species over a mile distance in our mountains. That is unheard of in this world … it’s a magical mountain range, so why not have a magical beast that is elusive and furtive living in these mountains.”
Robert Schaulis can be reached at 707-441-0585.