Despite John Green’s association of the “Bigfoot” with the Sasquatch, there is no similarity at all. “Bigfoot” was unheard of until October 6, 1958, when catskinner Gerry Crew brought a huge plaster cast of an enlarged human foot into Eureka, California, for the news to take a picture. Lumbermen had been seeing these footprints since August, he said. They could be found in the roads and around their equipment in the morning.

Crew’s boss was a man named Ray Wallace. In 2002 when Wallace died, his family printed in his obituary that he had been the “Bigfoot.” Wallace’s family was venomously denounced by Bigfooters. However, the accusation was true.

Two sets of footprints were found in October. The Crew-type, seen here in the picture at right, known as The Crew Print; it was merely an enlarged human flat foot. The other type of foot appeared at the same time and would become predominant in the area, being found off and on for 10 years. This other foot was “hourglass” in shape and had a noticeable groove in the ball of the foot, and five well formed human toes. It was so predominant at Bluff Creek that Dr. John Napier of the Smithsonian dubbed it The Hourglass Print and exclusively associated it with Bluff Creek. It was never found anywhere else.

These were the footprints that John Green and Bob Titmus investigated in November 1958 in the sandbar at Bluff Creek. In 1962 these same type of hourglass prints set the stage for the “flap” of sightings in 1963. Then again in August 1967 these same prints caused the Blue Creek Mountain spate of tracks near Bluff Creek which ended the “quiet years,” as Green had called them. Bigfoot was so hot again that two months later Roger Patterson would film his “Bigfoot” at Bluff Creek. Its feet, remarkably, would be patterned on the “hourglass” shape.

Ray’s nephew, Dale Lee, shows the Seattle Times one pair of his uncle’s fake feet that Rant Mullins carved for him.

Wallace claimed that in 1958 his brother helped him with another pair of feet, both of which Rant Mullins had carved for them. The 1958 tracks are proof of that. A December 6, 1965, San Francisco Chronicle article reads: “Bill Chambers, at that time a reporter for the Humboldt Times, inspected the prints found by Crew  and another set of giant prints found in the Bluff Creek area by contractor Ray Wallace.”

However, in 2002, the newspapers didn’t show pictures of the other pairs of feet that Wallace had carved, leading Bigfooters to declare that the feet Dale Wallace is holding up don’t even match the Crew Print. This is true, but they match every other track left at Bluff Creek. The Bigfooters merely had to go to John Green’s old books to uncover pictures of Wallace’s fake “hourglass” foot to realize he was the “Bigfoot” of Bluff Creek.

The Province of Canada made the connection. Piqued by Roe’s account, John Green drove to California. When he arrived, he met with Crew and a man named Bemis. They investigated some old and convenient tracks. Then in November, Green was back. There was a hot tip from Bob Titmus, one of Crew’s friends. Titmus had been the one who taught Crew how to make the plaster casts. Footprints were now found on the sandbar at Bluff Creek. They were 15 inches and “hourglass” in shape. They were different from Crew’s print. The Crew-type of print would never show up again. But the “hourglass” would become associated exclusively with Bluff Creek. Titmus and Green would be two of the foremost Bigfooters of Tom Slick’s PNE.  

Green, left, measuring hourglass tracks at Blue Creek Mountain overlooking Bluff Creek, August 1967. In his early On the Track of the Sasquatch, 1968, Green writes: “They were familiar to me— the same 15-inch print with a split in the ball of the foot that I had first seen 9 years before. . .”

Above, Green declared this to be “a typical” print at Blue Creek Mountain. The pictures of such prints, including the sandbar 1962 prints seen by Midshipman Clark, can be seen throughout Green’s old books. Indeed, in summing up all the footprints that had been found in the Bluff Creek area since 1958, Green wrote in On the Track of the Sasquatch:  “An unusual feature discernible in most tracks, in varying degrees, is a division right in the middle of what appears to be the ball of the foot.”

Rene Dahinden’s incredible picture of one of the Blue Creek Mountain prints of August 1967. It is regarded as the “best photo” in existence of a Bigfoot. Right, a 13 inch model, which also turned up along with the 15 inch model above, at Blue Creek Mountain. It is noticeable for the groove in the ball of the foot. Wallace’s brother must have been helping him again with another pair of feet. Photo at right is called The Dahinden Print.  

Since the Yeti foot had been so popular in the 1950s, after Shipton’s photo became so famous, one wonders if the groove in the ball of the foot was supposed to mimic the groove in that foot. In that foot, however, the groove implies a separate joint for an offset toe. For Wallace’s wooden feet, it is incongruous and simply in the ball without any connection to a toe.

There is no question that Ray Wallace was the Bigfoot. Along with his brother he created the footprints in 1958, 1962, and 1967, which shows he was active for about 10 years in the area. One must only refer to the earliest books on the subject to see his wooden feet alone were the Bigfoot. Bigfooters’ venomous denouncements of the Wallace Family have no basis in facts. The news merely did not show the Crew-type of print to the world. But there can be no doubt that Ray Wallace’s “hourglass” model was made alongside with it.     

A fatal comparison for Bluff Creek. The Sasquatch foot matches neither the “hourglass” or the Crew Print.

Examples of how the “hourglass shape was exclusively associated with “Bigfoot” everywhere in northern California 

On the Trail of the Sasquatch

Exposing the truth about Bigfoot