Willow Creek, California - Bigfoot Museum and Statue

We just returned from Willow Creek. The Big Foot Exhibit inside the China Flat Museum is still intact. There are three large wooden statues of Big Foot along the Main Street, and that includes the huge one outside of the museum. But down the street behind the Big Foot Motel is a large iron cage which I understand from the motel owner once housed a replica of the hairy monster. While the creature is gone, the cage exists and is worth stopping by to see. [Jan Norwood, 06/21/2006]

On May 6, 2000 The Willow Creek/China Flat museum opened its new Bigfoot collection to the public. I travelled up to Willow Creek with fellow adventurer Craid D. Stratton to visit the museum on the day of the ribbon cutting. The keynote speaker was John Green, legendary Bigfoot investigator, and the event was attended by Bigfoot enthusiasts from around the Pacific Northwest.

The front of the new wing which houses the collection is guarded by a redwood sculpture of bigfoot that looms about twenty-five feet over the parking lot (people in Northern California love to carve stuff out of redwood trees). The wing houses displays of critical bigfoot evidence, a variety of footprint casts, a collection of bigfoot related pop-culture toys, doodads, and collectables, as well as a growing archive of information that may become the heart of a research center for California bigfoot activity.

Willow Creek is where the modern era of Bigfoot hunting began when a logger named Jerry Crew wandered into town one day in the 1950s with a plaster cast of a giant footprint he found around the equipment being used for logging. Since then Willow Creek has become The Bigfoot Capital of Northern California. [Kelly Doren, 09/08/2000]

My wife and I visited during Labor Day Weekend in 1997 for their Annual Bigfoot Celebration. This tiny town, buried deep in the mountains a few hours north of San Francisco, claims to have had the most sightings of Bigfoot anywhere in the world. As a result, each Labor Day weekend is dedicated to celebrating the life and times of Sasquatch. Wake up early and catch a "Bigfoot Breakfast Special" at one of the few diners in town! Go to Main Street for the Bigfoot Parade featuring various floats and costumed characters honoring the manimal of the day! Head on over to the Bigfoot Ice Cream Social at the Bigfoot Museum where you'll see plaster footprints of the big guy! Head on over to the Fireman's Bigfoot Barbecue for horseshoes and chicken wings surrounded by Bigfoot aficionados! Take home a few trinkets to remember your stay -- keychains, bumper stickers, finger puppets, and a Bigfoot map showing all the places he's been sighted. [Jay Baxter, 04/03/1999]

[RA: Needless to say, there is also a Bigfoot statue in town.]