One look at this exhibit, and there's no need to ask how Bigfoot got his name.

Sasquatch Outpost

Bailey, Colorado

The way Jim Myers tells it, he and his wife Daphne moved to the Colorado mountain town of Bailey to lead a quiet life and open a grocery store.

Toddler Bigfoot takes a stroll inside the museum.

Then one day Jim had a talk with a local lodge owner who said she'd seen a Bigfoot. Then other locals came into the store and said that they'd seen Bigfoot, too. Jim put up a map with pins to mark the Sasquatch sightings, and then put in a Bigfoot display, and then a small Bigfoot museum. After a couple of years Jim and Daphne had stopped selling groceries and had expanded the museum once, twice, three times. They'll have to add on to the building if Bigfoot keeps stomping around.

The former Bailey Country Store, now Sasquatch Outpost, is really two different attractions. Up front is the gift shop, with themed items such as Sasquatch socks and a lamp of a Bigfoot being beamed aboard a flying saucer. In back is the Sasquatch Encounter Discovery Museum, a series of rooms that Jim takes seriously. "I want people to see that this is a well-thought-through museum," Jim told us. The map is still there, now filled with hundreds of pins and protected behind hinged glass. Jim unlocks the glass and adds a pin only if he's convinced of the credibility of the people telling him their Bigfoot story.

Former Bailey Country Store: now a Rocky Mountain rendezvous for all things Sasquatch.

Jim has personally seen a Bigfoot since moving to Bailey, and is often out in the woods doing research. One result of this effort is a showstopper for the museum: The Tremendous Turd. "I'd never seen a turd like that," said Jim, who discovered the feces, four feet long, in July 2020, about ten miles from the Outpost. The turd display shows how different it is from those left by Colorado's other large animals. "It was like something was walking as it was laid down," Jim said. "I sent a piece off to get analyzed and the people I sent it to never replied."

Bigfoot is fond of braiding horses' manes.

Several displays in the museum are there simply to convey Bigfoot's mysterious allure. In one, a Sasquatch dummy with glowing eyes peers out from between aspen tree trunks that Jim hauled into the building (Jim said that he'd seen the glowing eyes of Bigfoot several times at night). Another display shows a Bigfoot pressed up against a window, breaking through the museum wall, apparently wanting to learn more about itself (Jim said that it was created by Harvey Pratt, who designed the National Native American Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC). A third life-size Bigfoot holds the hand of a Bigfoot toddler, and turns its head, sniffs, and grunts when visitors break an invisible beam of light. "I was very specific with the face and the sounds," said Jim of this Sasquatch. "It scares the bejesus out of some people."

Bigfoot also has a thing about ripping up American flags.

The museum showcases a variety of Bigfoot footprint casts, but is unique for its displays of unusual evidence (such as the Turd). The Twisted Tree exhibit, for example, shows pieces of remote woodland foliage that have literally been ripped in two, which an accompanying sign notes could only be done with "super-human strength." Another display, of several braided manes of horses left out to pasture, is also attributed to Bigfoot. "It's clearly not horses grooming each other," Jim said. "Horses may be deft with their lips, but they can't tie knots."

A small fraction of the sausage-linked Tremendous Turd.

Strangest of all may be a shredded and braided American flag, donated to Sasquatch Outpost by fellow Sasquatch museum-owner Harriett "Bigfoot Lady" McFeely of Nebraska. "She was at a ceremony where old flags are burned, and 13 of them were ripped and braided," said Jim. Bigfoot is again the suspect and, according to Jim, only red, white, and blue flags have been found similarly mangled. "I don't know what to make of it," Jim said.

"The whole reason I built the museum is that there's a lot of confusion and misperception," said Jim. Visitors, for example, are sometime surprised to learn that there are many Bigfoot, not just one. "And I've been asked, 'Has Bigfoot ever copulated with humans?'" Jim said. "God, I hope that's not true." Jim, who leads local Bigfoot camp-outs, rejects the idea that Bigfoot would assault a human being. "We've never had anyone attacked, and we've had lots of encounters."

At the end of the museum is a "Do You Believe?" ballot box that enables visitors to vote on Bigfoot's legitimacy. The votes, said Jim, are overwhelmingly Yes, although he concedes that people who come to Sasquatch Outpost are likely inclined to be pro-Bigfoot. "I do the best I can do," he said, "but if someone doesn't want to believe, they won't."