A working chronicle of how the figure now called Bigfoot has been described, recorded, and remembered in this corner of the Southwest. Drawn from oral tradition, newspaper archives, and modern sighting reports.
Long before newspapers in the Pacific Northwest coined the term ‘Bigfoot,’ indigenous peoples of what is now New Mexico told of tall, hair-covered beings who lived in the high timber. Jicarilla Apache traditions describe wild people in the Sangre de Cristos; among the Pueblos there are accounts of giants who kept to themselves.
Scattered turn-of-the-century newspapers in northern New Mexico carried short items about ‘wild men’ seen by ranchers near Mora, Taos and Las Vegas. In 1931, The Albuquerque Tribune reported sightings of a “gorilla” in the El Porvenir region, though most accounts were regarded as mere curiosities or hoaxes. None were investigated by what we would now call a wildlife agency — the Department of Game and Fish was only founded in 1903 and its early work focused on game animals, not folklore.
The 1958 Humboldt County, California reports popularized the word ‘Bigfoot,’ and the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film made the figure famous nationwide. Within a few years, New Mexico residents began submitting accounts to the national Bigfoot research networks just forming on the West Coast — most from the Jemez, the Sangre de Cristos, and the Gila. Reports described tree knocks, whoops, and sightings of a large, hairy “man.”
Through the 1970s, San Miguel and Mora counties produced an unusual number of reports relative to their tiny populations. Hikers near El Porvenir, Gallinas Canyon, and Cowles described tracks in soft creek banks, ‘wood knocks’ at night, and figures glimpsed at the edge of clearings. Reports from El Porvenir included giant handprints being left on cabin windows and rocks being thrown at hikers.Local biologists at the time dismissed the reports, suggesting it was likely just a black bear or campers from El Porvenir Christian Camp playing pranks.
Southwestern New Mexico — the Gila Wilderness and the Datil Range — became a second hotspot. The remoteness of the Gila, larger than the state of Rhode Island and home to fewer than a hundred year-round residents, made it the kind of country where, proponents argued, a large undiscovered primate could plausibly remain hidden. Skeptics pointed out the same country is also where the last verified grizzly bear in New Mexico was killed in 1931.Interest in the region peaked in 1999 when students from the University of New Mexico were reported missing after venturing into the area in search of Bigfoot. It turned out to be a prank, though the students claimed they had captured footage of the creature. The footage was thoroughly investigated, but the results came back inconclusive.
New Mexico now ranks in the middle of US states for reported sightings, with most modern accounts concentrated in the same three regions: the Sangre de Cristos, the Jemez, and the Gila. The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization lists dozens of New Mexico reports; the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish takes no official position.
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