Bigfoot Discovery Museum

The museum. cmijoredux (Atlas Obscura User)

This isn’t your typical roadside museum. Its contents dive into the world of the unknown and focus on one of the most legendary cryptids said to lurk in North America’s woods.

Michael Rugg and Paula Yarr are co-founders of the Bigfoot Discovery Project or “BDP.” The BDP accepts the subject of the Patterson/Gimlin Film (the famous blurry “Bigfoot” film) as the type specimen for the Pacific Coast Bigfoot or Sasquatch and seeks to create a dialogue about the implications of the impending “discovery of Bigfoot” by conventional Western science.

The Bigfoot Discovery Museum opened in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Central California in the Spring of 2004. Its purpose is to educate the public at large about the probability of the big hairy cryptid and the current best guesses as to its habits and its place in the natural world.

Visitors to the museum will see many Bigfoot artifacts including footprint casts, a local sighting map, Bigfoot videos, hominid skulls, Bigfoot-related pop culture and more. Don’t miss the nine-foot-tall Bigfoot folk art sculpture in the diorama out back!

Know Before You Go

It's just south of the town of Felton, California, across from the entrance of Henry Cowell State Park. The main museum is only open Wednesday through Monday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., but you can still view the large diorama in its separate building behind the main museum. Admission to the museum is free; a $2 to $5 donation is requested.

Museum meetings occur monthly for museum members and membership costs $25 a year.