Bigfoot in the Santa Cruz Mountains
Bigfoot in the Santa Cruz Mountains
View the Sighting List & Map or Report Your Sighting Here.
Santa Cruz Bigfoot
View the Sighting List & Map or Report Your Sighting Here.
For thousands of years, the Awaswas Ohlone Indians thrived in the Santa Cruz Mountains, living intuitively with the land and its resources, possessing an intimate knowledge of the forest’s animals, their behaviors, and their role in the ecosystem.
Mike Rugg of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, through correspondence with Kathy Strain, anthropologist and author of Giants, Cannibals & Monsters: Bigfoot in Native Culture, described two names used by the Ohlone Indians to describe Bigfoot-like creatures.
Chuntana was the name used by the local Indians to describe the classic basket ogress of California Indian folklore: “a huge, woodland ogress with a simple mentality and a fondness for the flesh of human beings, whom she carried home in a basket on her back.” The Ohlone Indians used this name to describe all female bigfoot. The name bears a striking similarity to a name used to describe Bigfoot-like creatures in Siberia: Chuchunaa.
Takakuna was the personal name given to a Bigfoot that was known by the Indians to reside in the area of Chukchano, or Felton Flats.
In the early days of California’s American Period, local newspapers recorded sightings of “wild men” of the woods that lived throughout the range, terrifying early settlers & tourists.
In the 1870’s Frank Harrison Gassway wrote of a “wild man of the woods that infested the forest” around Felton, and “had developed a hospitable habit of prowling around the camp at night and uttering dismal cries.” According to Gassaway, “there are doubtless thousands of just such miserable beings in the vicinity.” The wild men of the Santa Cruz Mountains became such a problem that “Santa Cruz county authorities [began] to consider the advisability of putting a price upon the scalps of these woodland waifs.”
In 1889, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported a witness having seen a wild man that was “sixteen feet high, red haired and wild eyed.”
Much like the Fouke Monster of Arkansas, the Mogollon Monster of Arizona, or the Grassman of Ohio, residents of the Santa Cruz Mountains have used regional folk names to describe local Bigfoot-like creatures.
In the early 70’s, a tall, hairy, bipedal creature seen scavenging in the open landfill of the Ben Lomond Transfer Station came to be known by locals as the Ben Lomond Dump Monster.
Years later, and in the same general area, a creature known for its loud howls and unearthly screams came to be known locally as the Quail Hollow Howler.
Similarly, a creature whose vocalizations were heard frequently emanating from the vicinity of the Olive Springs Quarry came to be known by locals as the Olive Springs Howler.
In 1963, tall, white Bigfoot was seen by two witnesses in Portola State Park. Nearly forty years later in 2002, a white Bigfoot matching the same description was seen along the coast near Wilder Ranch.
In 1980, two men encountered a 12’ tall Bigfoot on Granite Creek Road in Scotts Valley. Following the reporting of their sighting in the local paper, a family living on Granite Creek Road reported several occasions of seeing a Bigfoot feeding in the orchard adjacent to their house in the early 70’s.
In 2015, a Reddit user reported encountering what appeared to be a “chimpanzee” carrying off a dead coyote under its arm in the vicinity of El Granada & Half Moon Bay. 40 years earlier, Peter Byrne of the Bigfoot Research Project investigated a sighting in Half Moon Bay that occurred in nearly the exact same area.