Jerry Crew and Ray Wallace... a little history lesson on the creation and hoaxing of Bigfoot...
By Natalya Estrada, Eureka Times-Standard
Whether you love or hate Bigfoot lore, one thing is certain, the name Bigfoot started here.
Deep within the archival pages of the Humboldt Times — a predecessor of the Eureka Times-Standard — through the writing of columnist Andrew Genzoli, a legend was born.
Within the article, “Giant footprints puzzle residents along Trinity River” published in October 1958, Genzoli writes that Jerry Crew and his road construction squad found Sasquatch footprints in Bluff Creek, north of Willow Creek near the Klamath River. The article contains the first mention of the term Bigfoot.
Crew made a plaster cast of the impressions, pictured in the original article, and then brought the “evidence” into the newsroom.
The cast measured 18 inches long and 7 inches wide, and Crew said the creature had a 50-inch walking stride. According to the article, the creature seemed to visit the area from time to time.
“The latest appearance of the huge thing — individual or animal — occurred again sometime Wednesday night or early Thursday morning,” Genzoli wrote. “The country (where Bigfoot is seen) is some of Humboldt County’s deepest wilderness where not all of its natural secrets are known to the white man.”
For all of its glory, the story was later discredited with, maybe a guilty conscience, the truth behind the Bigfoot hoax from Ray Wallace.
He was a construction worker credited with creating the footprints. Wallace was contacted by the Times 10 days later by reporter Bill Chambers.
Chambers reported the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office had a man responsible for the tracks in Bluff Creek who would confess to the whole ordeal in the article, cleverly headlined “Sheriff’s Office ends up with Bigfoot in mouth.”
Wallace, however, didn’t exactly invite the Times in for a cup of tea to tell his tale of Bigfoot. Instead, he told Chambers he was not going to be made a laughing stock.
Fast forward to 2002 when Wallace, at the age of 84, died in Washington state, but not before telling the “truth” to his family.
This prompted the Times-Standard to contact the wife of deceased Times-Standard Editor L.W. “Scoop” Beal, according to more reporting by Times-Standard reporter John Driscoll in 2008.
“June Beal told the Times-Standard that she’d been mum on the topic for nearly five decades, even as she watched it spiral out of control,” Driscoll wrote. “Finally, with Wallace’s death, she was willing to share her secret.”
Beal was quoted as saying: “They (her husband and Wallace) were in on this hoax. It was just a fun thing and the fun got out of hand.”
Ray Oliver, Genzoli’s assistant at the time of the 1958 article, said in an email to the Times-Standard this month that he was at the Humboldt Times when Jerry Crew brought in the Bigfoot cast.
“Andy (Genzoli) dumped all his regular work on me while he did the article that appeared in the Sunday Humboldt Times and set off the whole Bigfoot hysteria,” he said. “I was working in the next room while all the excitement was going on in the main newsroom. The usually opinionated and very talkative L.W. ‘Scoop’ Beal, came in quietly and sat by my desk. (He) just watched and said very little. It should have been a tip off.”
These days the legend of Bigfoot continues, though the closest thing to an actual sighting has been the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967, shot near — you guessed it — Bluff Creek.
Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of that film and from that emerges the presence of the Animal Planet show “Finding Bigfoot” crew in Willow Creek this weekend. One of the show’s hosts, James “Bobo” Fay, said Humboldt County was the Mecca of Bigfoot, and the longtime resident said he was happy to be home this week.
“Humboldt County is basically the Bigfoot capital of the world,” Fay told the Times-Standard on Tuesday.
Whether or not that capital is based off of truth, legend or a construction worker’s hoax depends on who you talk to.
Source: ChicoER News
Whether you love or hate Bigfoot lore, one thing is certain, the name Bigfoot started here.
Deep within the archival pages of the Humboldt Times — a predecessor of the Eureka Times-Standard — through the writing of columnist Andrew Genzoli, a legend was born.
Within the article, “Giant footprints puzzle residents along Trinity River” published in October 1958, Genzoli writes that Jerry Crew and his road construction squad found Sasquatch footprints in Bluff Creek, north of Willow Creek near the Klamath River. The article contains the first mention of the term Bigfoot.
Crew made a plaster cast of the impressions, pictured in the original article, and then brought the “evidence” into the newsroom.
The cast measured 18 inches long and 7 inches wide, and Crew said the creature had a 50-inch walking stride. According to the article, the creature seemed to visit the area from time to time.
“The latest appearance of the huge thing — individual or animal — occurred again sometime Wednesday night or early Thursday morning,” Genzoli wrote. “The country (where Bigfoot is seen) is some of Humboldt County’s deepest wilderness where not all of its natural secrets are known to the white man.”
For all of its glory, the story was later discredited with, maybe a guilty conscience, the truth behind the Bigfoot hoax from Ray Wallace.
He was a construction worker credited with creating the footprints. Wallace was contacted by the Times 10 days later by reporter Bill Chambers.
Chambers reported the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office had a man responsible for the tracks in Bluff Creek who would confess to the whole ordeal in the article, cleverly headlined “Sheriff’s Office ends up with Bigfoot in mouth.”
Wallace, however, didn’t exactly invite the Times in for a cup of tea to tell his tale of Bigfoot. Instead, he told Chambers he was not going to be made a laughing stock.
Fast forward to 2002 when Wallace, at the age of 84, died in Washington state, but not before telling the “truth” to his family.
This prompted the Times-Standard to contact the wife of deceased Times-Standard Editor L.W. “Scoop” Beal, according to more reporting by Times-Standard reporter John Driscoll in 2008.
“June Beal told the Times-Standard that she’d been mum on the topic for nearly five decades, even as she watched it spiral out of control,” Driscoll wrote. “Finally, with Wallace’s death, she was willing to share her secret.”
Beal was quoted as saying: “They (her husband and Wallace) were in on this hoax. It was just a fun thing and the fun got out of hand.”
Ray Oliver, Genzoli’s assistant at the time of the 1958 article, said in an email to the Times-Standard this month that he was at the Humboldt Times when Jerry Crew brought in the Bigfoot cast.
“Andy (Genzoli) dumped all his regular work on me while he did the article that appeared in the Sunday Humboldt Times and set off the whole Bigfoot hysteria,” he said. “I was working in the next room while all the excitement was going on in the main newsroom. The usually opinionated and very talkative L.W. ‘Scoop’ Beal, came in quietly and sat by my desk. (He) just watched and said very little. It should have been a tip off.”
These days the legend of Bigfoot continues, though the closest thing to an actual sighting has been the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967, shot near — you guessed it — Bluff Creek.
Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of that film and from that emerges the presence of the Animal Planet show “Finding Bigfoot” crew in Willow Creek this weekend. One of the show’s hosts, James “Bobo” Fay, said Humboldt County was the Mecca of Bigfoot, and the longtime resident said he was happy to be home this week.
“Humboldt County is basically the Bigfoot capital of the world,” Fay told the Times-Standard on Tuesday.
Whether or not that capital is based off of truth, legend or a construction worker’s hoax depends on who you talk to.
Source: ChicoER News
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