This long-awaited (we hope), long-delayed blog entry features a new, unpublished account of one of the notable figures of early Bigfooting, Mr. Ed Patrick. Patrick's name came up in a conversation having nothing to do with Bigfoot that we were having with one of our regular customers at Bigfoot Books, Dave Short. You mean THE Ed Patrick???, we asked him. Dave had been coming in the shop for years, and somehow this issue so primary to the history of Bigfoot in this area NEVER came up! As is so often the case in Willow Creek, all roads lead back to Bluff Creek. Dave knew Ed Patrick as a family friend and neighbor for years. In his two-page story below you may read again of the nature of the Bigfoot events and evidence that came out of the late 1950s and were fundamental in the creation of "Bigfoot" as a publicly known phenomenon and household name.
Recently we were interviewed by a reporter from the L.A. TIMES,
. Unfortunately, the paragraph dealing with us was cut by the editors from the article. Here is that missing part:
*******, who kindly provided two of the Ed Patrick photos below, would like to announce to his subscribers that the July 2011 issue of his
BIGFOOT TIMES was mailed out yesterday. He apologizes for the delay, but you know, these things happen sometimes with such a monumental one-man show.
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Official date for FINDING BIGFOOT filming in Willow Creek!
Having spoken at length with producers for Ping Pong Productions, who are filming the hit TV show FINDING BIGFOOT for Animal Planet, we may say that we're in for a "town hall meeting" at the Willow Creek VFW (Vets') Hall, in Veterans' Park down by Camp Kimtu. The public event invites all Bigfoot witnesses or the generally curious on AUGUST 10TH, 2011 at 6:00. This is the current word, though we suppose the event time and date are subject to change. Contact this blog for details if traveling. The whole cast and crew will be there, along with notable historical figures such as Al Hodgson. There will be further filming in the local area, but we can't disclose those details yet
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ED PATRICK, EARLY BIGFOOTER
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The PACIFIC NORTHWEST EXPEDITION at Bluff Creek in an early photo,
Nov.1959. Ed Patrick is to left, next to Tom Slick and Rene Dahinden. Bob Titmus
is in the foreground. Photo by John Green. Assumed to be at Louse Camp. |
Briefly, Ed Patrick was one of the vital links in the chain of early Bigfooting. He may have been the main connection between Jerry Crew, the catskinner road contracter cutting logging tracks in 1958 up in Bluff Creek, and Bob Titmus, the taxidermist and hunting guide who taught Crew about using plaster to cast some of the many Bigfoot tracks found during that time. Of course, it all went down in the history of Bigfooting, as Crew's cast appeared in the Humboldt Times as the cover story that early October. Ed was subsequently one of the few first members of the PACIFIC NORTHWEST EXPEDITION, organized by Tom Slick, entrepreneur, innovator airman and oil magnate. Along for the ride, at least for the first nine days was Rene Dahinden. John Green left the project shortly thereafter due to personal conflicts and arguments about such subjects as Titmus hanging up used tampons that he'd fished out of service station rest rooms in trees around the area of Louse Camp. However, Ed Patrick remained steadfastly on duty up in Bluff Creek even after Bob Titmus had to return to his taxidermy business in Anderson, near Redding, CA, and Peter Byrne arrived from the Himalayas to take over the operation. Patrick was a local of Redding but also of Hoopa and Willow Creek, in the heart of the Northern Californian classic Bigfoot Country.
It can't really be said any better, so read more about Ed Patrick in this excellent obituary written by Loren Coleman on
CRYPTOMUNDO:
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Ed Patrick at the INTERNATIONAL BIGFOOT
SYMPOSIUM, 2003, Willow Creek.
Photos above and below courtesy of and copyright
by DANIEL PEREZ, used with permission. |
Dave Short's Ed Patrick Story
I got to be friends with Ed Patrick (who went by "Patrick") back in about 1977 when I lived in a trailer at Gambi's. * He was across the driveway and he and my daughter, who was about 3 at the time, were friends. He used to carry her around standing on his back pockets and they both enjoyed it. He was a grandfather figure for her when she didn't have any. She called him "Pocket"...
He lived in a nice old airstream trailer and drove truck when he had work around the N. Coast. Mostly logs I think but chips too I'm pretty sure. He was probably 55/60 at the time. So he'd be about 90+ now.
He kept in touch with us and sent care packages for us on Christmas with nuts and Oranges and such. He was always a friendly, jolly sort but was very hip about the whole government thing ** even back then.
I got to spend time with him when he and I volunteered to try and kill a bear that was pestering an old woman (Ruby Harrell) up on Friday Ridge. We spent a couple weekends hunting up there and never saw the bear, but did get a chance to talk quite a bit and travel around together. So naturally Bigfoot was a regular topic, because I've always been interested in that subject since I was young and traveling through Humboldt frequently in summer.
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Ed Patrick during lunch at the SYMPOSIUM with John Green.
Daniel Perez photo. Go to bigfoottimes.net for more. |
Ed told me the following to the best of my recollection:
I'm pretty sure that he said that he was up on a muddy logging road near a fresh logging show up above Bluff Creek and on the first night they were there, they were frightened by lots of
noise coming from up near the yarder that night, and spent a sleepless night the first night. He said the next morning, there were fresh Bigfoot tracks all around where they were parked in the mud (which spooked the men), and they went up to the landing where the noise came from and found more tracks, [and] a yarder that had (heavy duty steel) control arms bent over as if it was done by someone incredibly strong, and some full 55 gallon drums flung down the hill.
He said that he was hired on an expedition to track Bigfoot in the most remote country imaginable in winter. *** He was hunting a lot up "Happy Camp Mountain".
The guy running the show **** had 500,000 bucks and was hiring locals with 4WD vehicles (Ed had a Jeep) to chain up and drive as far up mountain roads as they could get in fresh, trackless snow. They'd drive until they got stuck in 4WD with chains, then they'd get out and snowshoe all over the mountains looking for sign.
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Jerry Crew with footprint from
Bluff Creek in the 1958 article
that gave "Bigfoot" a household
name and birthed Bigfooting as
a culture in North America. |
He said he worked one winter, daily driving around like this and snowshoeing and he'd seen "Lots" of tracks. He said that many times. He said they also found scat and hair that was analyzed that came back "Unknowns".
At some point later, I asked him how many tracks he thought he'd actually seen in this time and he sort of shrugged and said, "I don't know, lots." So I asked him to put a number on it. He thought about it for a little bit and said with a shrug, "I don't know, 500?"
Keep in mind, many of these tracks were found in fresh snow, with zero human sign, way up on snowed-in mountain summits in the dead of winter.
It's not like someone could wait up there for a fresh snow, then lay down tracks with fake feet with long strides over hill and dale, sometimes for miles in rough terrain. That would be impossible and what would be the point? In the off chance that it would be the place people would look that day? Without leaving any human sign?
Ed's story never wavered or changed in any way as long as I knew him (20 years or so). He was very matter of fact about it, like it was no big deal, just a fact. During those 20 years, I never knew him to bullshit me, exaggerate or tell tales. He was a down to earth old hunter guy.
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| John Green's Book. |
At some point in the 80s or early 90s, I considered writing a children’s book about a baby Bigfoot narrated by a grandfatherly person to kids, and I got all the books on the subject I could find from the Willow Creek Library. One of the books was a small yellow one with less than 100 pages or so in it *****, and sure enough Ed Patrick's name was in the book. The things he told me were consistent with what I read in the book.
The last time Ed and I visited was during (I think the first) International Bigfoot symposium in Willow Creek at the Library ******. Ed had been invited, to attend and offer information. He stopped and visited with me and the kids that morning and stayed overnight in his van in my yard.
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The Jerry Crew Bluff Creek print cast, vs. a pathetic
wood stomper made by hoaxer Ray Wallace. |
Ed was a great guy and I have no reason to believe that he lied to me in any way. The things he said checked out in the book I mentioned.
That's about all I can say on the subject.
Dave Short
July 28, 2011
Willow Creek
Notes:
* Gambi's Cabins, just west of Bigfoot Books, Highway 299, Willow Creek
** The "whole government thing" refers to corruption, the screwing-over of the People, etc.
*** The November 1959-1962 Pacific Northwest Expedition, in the Bluff Creek area.
**** Tom Slick, of San Antonio, Texas.
***** ON THE TRACK OF THE SASQUATCH, by John Green, 1968.
****** In 2003, Willow Creek, CA.
Brief follow-up:
BIGFOOT BOOKS: Dave, this is totally AWESOME.
I will read it up in Bluff Creek this weekend, at the BFRO expedition presentation I am doing.
Can you put any dates on when these things happened?
I know that the PNW Expedition ran from later 1959 until mid 1962.
http://www.squatchopedia.com/index.php/Pacific_Northwest_Bigfoot_Expedition
Didn't you see my links earlier? Ed passed away a while back:
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/patrick-obit/
Any further details or Bigfoot stories would be great for my blog.
Can I use your name on there?
Also, a brief explanation of the "government thing" he knew about that you mentioned would help.
Best, Steve
Dave Short: AWESOME. GLAD YOU LIKED IT.
IT'S THE BEST OF MY RECOLLECTION.
Dates... NO AFRAID NOT, I DON'T THINK HE SAID AND I'M BAD WITH DATES.
Ed passing away... AW SHIT. NO I DIDN'T SEE THAT, BUT HE WAS GETTING OLD FOR SURE.
Further details... THAT'S ABOUT IT FOR NOW.
Re. "government thing"... JUST HOW THE GOVERNMENT WAS SCREWING US ALL OVER IN GENERAL. IT'S THE ONE THING I EVER SAW HIM GET WORKED UP ABOUT. TAXES, COPS, THE FOREST SERVICE. IN GENERAL.
OK MAN. HAVE A GOOD EXPEDITION.
PEACE
D.
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Bluff Creek forestry and road contractor,
Jay Rowland, Willow Creek, 2010.
Photo by Steven Streufert. |
BIGFOOT BOOKS: The stories of Ed's experience correspond greatly with what my neighbor down the hill, Jay Rowland, says. He's in his 80s now, and worked in Bluff Creek from the very late 1950s up into the late 1970s. He would often live up there in a tent or trailer right at Louse Camp, superintending the work site base camp and equipment while other workers went home for the night. He tells of many footprints found when he knew darn well that he was the only other human up in the Bluff Creek basin. One time he was snowed in, and relief workers could not gain access to him due to road blockages. As he was trying to get down to them as they tried to get up to him, Rowland found many a large humanoid track freshly made in the newly-fallen snowdrifts. He also found fresh tracks down on the creek sandbars under similar circumstances, when no one else was around.
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ED PATRICK entry from SQUATCHOPEDIA:
"One of the founding fathers in Bigfootry, Ed Patrick formally of Redding and Hoopa, California, passed away on June 19, 2009. A key but often forgotten figure in the early history and beginnings of Bigfoot/Sasquatch investigations, Edward Richard Patrick died in Wonewoc, Wisconsin at the age of 83, after a lengthy illness.
Patrick’s Bigfoot activities were not widely known to the public because he never sought a podium and was overshadowed by his more famous buddy of the time,
Bob Titmus. But Patrick was there in the initial days and assisted in contributing to the collection of more solid evidence for the existence of the creature than had previously occurred.
Ed Patrick shared in a pivotal role in the first public debut of “Bigfoot” in California in October, 1958. At the time of sightings and finds of large footprints by a road crew of a large hairy hominid along Bluff Creek, Patrick’s friend, Bob Titmus, owner of a taxidermy shop in nearby Redding, became interested in the incidents. It would be Titmus who supplied another old friend, construction worker
Jerry Crew with the plaster-of-Paris and the instructions for using it that enabled Crew to make his famous cast of one of the 16-inch prints being found on the newly built dirt road above Bluff Creek, in the northwest corner of the state.
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| Front page, Humboldt Times. |
Ed Patrick became one of the most trustworthy and steady members of a small group of early Bigfooters involved in the
Tom Slick-sponsored “Pacific Northwest Expedition,” formed in 1959. John Green would write years later that it would be Patrick that stayed out in the field the most, for others, such as
René Dahinden grew disgusted with the personal infighting and went back to Canada, while Titmus had to go home to run his business.
Born December 18, 1925, in Summit Township, Wisconsin, Edward Patrick served in the US Army in WWII in the 232nd Infantry in Germany. He has been laid to rest in Potter Cemetery in Juneau County, Wisconsin.
Even in his official funeral announcement, his family reported that one of Edward Patrick’s 'greatest passions was [his] many years of searching for Bigfoot.' "
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PHOTOS from the 2003 Willow Creek INTERNATIONAL BIGFOOT SYMPOSIUM,
taken by Steven Streufert.
This was our first Bigfoot conference, in our own home town, too (we walked to the venue), and what notable characters were there! It was a truly historic event. Afterwards there was a convoy trip up to the PGF site location, where history was "unmade" when no one could really agree WHERE the film site was exactly located. Confusion ensued, with many differing opinions. It was this situation that eventually led to our own BLUFF CREEK FILM SITE PROJECT, 2007-2011.
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| The 2003 Willow Creek International Bigfoot Symposium podium. |
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Sign for at Trinity Valley Elementary School with
International Bigfoot Symposium announcement. |
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One of the organizers, whose name we've forgotten (he assisted
Al Hodgson), announces the historical notables discussion. John Green,
Jim McClarin, two area locals, Bob Gimlin and Hodgson, from left. |
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| Group photo with speakers. Names given at bottom of photo section. |
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Mr. Robert Gimlin tells his story publicly for the first time in a long time.
It was a great honor to meet him in person here for the first time. |
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| Dr. Henner Fahrenbach gives his presentation on Sasquatch hair samples. |
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The rather huge Bigfoot statue brought into the
Trinity Valley Elementary School gymnasium for
the International Bigfoot Symposium. |
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| Steven Streufert, with his favorite ladies, wearing Church of Bigfoot t-shirt. |
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Jay Herzog, Bigfoot Journalist, co-founder of
The Church of Bigfoot, Scientist |
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| Press pass that got ZogBoy in for free. |
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Another view of the 2003 speaker/notables panel, photographer unknown.
Top: Henner Fahrenbach, Kathy Moscowitz-Strain, Edward Patrick, Jimmy
Chilcutt, Rick Noll, Bob Gimlin, John Green (behind Gimlin), Alton Higgins,
Thomas Steenburg, Al Hodgson. Bottom: Jeff Meldrum, Jim McClarin, John
Bindernagel, and Dimitri Bayanov. |
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More from Michelle Bigley and Me:
Bigfoot Sightings
A collection of stories as told to the owner of Bigfoot Books, Steven Streufert, a local Bigfoot scholar. Streufert has chosen to keep his sources anonymous for the most part.
A sane and sober father of two is out fishing at a local lake when he looks up to see an upright ape-like creature stalking the opposite shore. A family is driving home up Hwy. 96 when a large, hairy biped stands up along the side of the road and paces down into the forest. Another fellow sees one outside the Hupa-area dump. While out camping in the Trinity Alps area a fellow’s tent is pelted periodically for hours with small rocks hailing down from the forested hillside, and strange wood knocks ring out in the night. Unknown chatter and howls are heard off in the dark mountain distance.
A local business owner’s father had the following experience. Early in the morning, arriving to open his shop, the life-long Willow Creeker heard something he had never heard in all his years out in the woods and hills. A loud howling, beastly yell, clearly not human but from no known animal, echoing off the canyon walls up from the river across Hwy. 299. This was strange, but he had a business to run. A short time later a government worker, either Forest Service or Fish and Game, came into his shop with an air of panic and wild-eyed excitement. Camping down on that same area of the river bar he had been awakened by the same ominous howl. Looking out his tent flap he saw a big hairy “creature,” walking along the bank. Walking? Yes, upright, walking, bigger than a man, and taller, at about seven feet. This was NO bear!
One customer told me that he had seen a family of Bigfoot (two large males, a female, and a juvenile) when he was a child back in the 1950s, at a Willow Creek area rural country dance. The several other kids at the dance, playing on the perimeter of the property, saw them, too. The creatures watched from the edge of the forest for a while, with obvious interest in what the playing human kids were doing. Nothing else happened. They just retreated slowly back into the woods. This fellow, a former logger seemed an utterly sensible and down to earth chap. It took much coaxing to get him to tell his story.
Quite more frequently someone tells of having seen a Bigfoot in their yard, perhaps eating from the blackberry bushes, seeing one crossing the road or a creek, or digging in a trash can. A woman working one of the forest fire lookout stations in the area is said to have seen a big hairy biped moving through some underbrush off Friday Ridge Road. This was after some footprints and a peculiar semi-woven nest made of bay tree leaves was found in the area. Sean Fries, and investigator out of Weaverville, was with his girlfriend up on Aikins Creek when they heard a noise in the brush. Not seeing anything, she took a photo, and upon getting the image on their laptop they noticed a strange brown form behind some trees. When enhanced digitally this form showed features that looked surprisingly like the head and upper torso of a humanoid creature. They returned to the spot and found that, when viewed from the same location and angle, the brown form was no longer there.
For more helpful (and intriguing) Bigfoot information, visit http://bigfootbooksblog.blogspot.com.
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Finally, here are two sections from the interesting skeptical history, BIGFOOT: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A LEGEND, by Joshua Blu Buhs, which mention Ed Patrick and the Pacific Northwest Expedition. Click image of text to enlarge and read.
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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!
You think YOU got problem with gossip and stalk, hu-man? ME got REAL problem. Every day Bigfoot Hunter out in woods, look for me. It start funny. Now it really annoy. How many fake wood knock and scream me make before you give up? Me leave big turd in trail and push down tree, they still not catch me, even smell of me. Before it make me cry laugh so hard, but now it just make me want puke in tent when they not there at Bluff Creek. Bigfoot hunter just stalker to me, hu-man. Some blow hard idiot even make death threat. Me tear in half and eat liver, fool naked ape.
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This blog is copyright and all that jazz, save for occasional small elements borrowed for "research" and information or satirical purposes only, 2011, Bigfoot Books and Steven Streufert. Borrowings for non-commercial purposes will be tolerated without the revenge of Angry Bigfoot, if notification, credit, citation and a kindly web-link are given, preferably after contacting us and saying, Hello, like a normal person would before taking a cup of salt. No serious rip-offs of our material for vulgar commercial gain will be tolerated without major BF stomping action coming down on you, hu-man.
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