The Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film

Bluff Creek already had a history. In 1958, Jerry Crew found 16-inch tracks there, and the Humboldt Times coined a name: Bigfoot. Roger Patterson was a former rodeo rider and amateur boxer from Yakima, Washington. He had been hooked since reading Ivan Sanderson's 1959 article in True. By 1967 he had self-published a book on the subject and was making a Bigfoot documentary. Riding with him was Bob Gimlin, another ex-rodeo man from Yakima. Gimlin doubted the creature existed at all.

Friday, October 20, 1967. Early afternoon. The two men were riding northeast along the east bank of Bluff Creek. They rounded an overturned tree beside a logjam. "There was a Bigfoot standing there just on the other side of the crick from us," Gimlin later recalled. "But it just immediately turned and started walking away."

The horses reacted first. "Roger's horse just started jumpin' and a lungin'," Gimlin said. Patterson pulled the camera from his saddlebag and went after the figure on foot. He shouted "Cover me." Gimlin held the rifle. Filming from about 60 to 90 feet, Patterson dropped to his knees, and the picture steadied.

Then, at frame 352, the creature turned its head and upper body to look back. Patterson said its expression showed "contempt and disgust." Both men took it to be female. "I could see its breasts hanging down and they flopped when it moved," Patterson said. He put its height at 6 ft 6 in to 7 ft. Gimlin guessed about 6 ft. The whole encounter took under two minutes.

The men had agreed not to shoot. "I think it would take a person with a little bit of murder in his heart to shoot something like this," Patterson told a Vancouver radio audience days later.

That evening they reached Al Hodgson's store in Willow Creek and started making calls. The next day the Times-Standard ran it on page one: "Mrs. Bigfoot Is Filmed!" Heavy rain began, and Gimlin covered the remaining prints with bark. On October 23, Forest Service timber cruiser Lyle Laverty photographed the trackway. On October 29, taxidermist Bob Titmus cast ten prints in a row. The prints measured about 14½ inches.

No government agency ever formally investigated. Scientists who saw early screenings mostly held reservations. Grover Krantz argued the muscle movement and gait were not a man in a suit. Special-effects artist Bill Munns later wrote a 488-page book defending the film. John Napier disagreed. The film, he wrote, "does not stand up well to functional analysis." In 1999, Daegling and Schmitt concluded that "it is not possible to evaluate the identity of the film subject with any confidence."

Then came the confessions. In 1999 Bob Heironimus said he had worn the suit. "I'm telling the truth. I'm tired after thirty-seven years." In 2002 costume maker Philip Morris said he had mail-ordered Patterson a gorilla suit. Neither produced documents or a suit. In 2026 the documentary Capturing Bigfoot showed a 16 mm reel said to date from 1966. Patterson's son Clint said he watched his father burn the suit "piece by piece."

Patterson died in January 1972, still saying the creature was real. Years later, standing on the sandbar again, Gimlin said: "This is the spot, Bobo. This is where we first saw her." The film became the template for the popular image of Bigfoot. In 2025, its pose became a Unicode emoji. Whatever crossed Bluff Creek that afternoon, it is still walking away.