The Red River Bigfoot
A quaint New Mexico mountain town has an unexpected visitor…
If you’ve ever visited the Rocky Mountains, then you know there’s a certain type of town that’s as common in those parts as Subarus and summer thunderstorms.
It’s the former mining town turned ski resort and outdoor enthusiast’s paradise, and although some of them have become quite kitschy and vulgar, there’s more than a few that have managed to more or less retain their quaint charm. Among the latter is picturesque Red River, which is nestled among the lofty peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Taos County, northern New Mexico.
Established in 1895, Red River has a long and illustrious history—first as the boisterous base camp for a horde of turn-of-the-century gold and silver miners, and later as a more sedate and family-friendly tourist destination.
Whether you’re into skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, off-roading, RVing, or just enjoying good food in a spectacular location, Red River has something for everyone. And, as it turns out, it might also be the perfect place for a little recreational “squatching”—that is to say, Bigfoot-watching.
New Mexico may not be the first place you imagine when you think of Bigfoot, but there’s actually a fairly lengthy paper trail of squatch sightings in the mountains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The scenic Jemez Mountains seem to have their own population of hirsute hominids, which I’ll discuss in future posts; but the Sangre de Cristos, especially in the area north of Taos and around the Red River region, are fairly notorious for their Bigfoot sightings.
Some encounters, without doubt, are dubious and poorly attested; but there are others that make you wonder, and point to the possibility of a well-established population of Bigfoot—or at least what paranormal researcher Jerome Clark calls “Hairy Bipeds,” or “HBs” for short.
“One woman and her son saw a large white-haired Bigfoot first walking along the edge of the trees on their way home late one night,” recounts an article from 2013 on the site “Red River Guide.”
“The next time they made the same trip the same creature seemed to wait for their car to get close before he walked across the road right in front of them and turned to look them straight in the eyes.”
Now, white-haired Bigfoot don’t seem to be a very common species of Hairy Biped. But it’s interesting to note that there are other reports of white- or pale-colored Bigfoot in the Sangre de Cristos, particularly in the more northerly ranges in Colorado, such as the Culebra Mountains or around Blanca Peak.
Maybe the Bigfoot of southern Colorado like to wander into New Mexico from time to time, much like the occasional moose?
Probably the most thoroughly documented Bigfoot encounter in the Red River area occurred in 2009, and was investigated by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). The anonymous witness’ description of the encounter is worth quoting at some length:
“We were getting up early to hitch up our travel trailer and start home to Oklahoma. My wife had gotten up first and then I got up and went into the bathroom. My wife opened the door and said that someone was standing outside the entry door to the bedroom of the trailer. I went back to the room and saw a large shadow in the window. The window is privacy glass so they couldn’t see inside. I could see a chest, a head and about half of the arm. I reached into the night stand [and] took out my pistol thinking that it was someone. I then started toward the back of the trailer to the main entry door. While I was doing this my wife thought to take photos. She took 3 photos which does show the shadow of whatever it was very well. When I was at the other end of the trailer I opened the door and turned on the outside light at the same time. There was nothing there, I did hear what sounded like someone walking very quickly in the distance. I went around the trailer but couldn’t see anyone. It was at this time that I realized that the window on the door is too high for someone to have been standing there. I took pictures to show how high it is. We waited until daylight to go back outside, I looked around the front and side of the trailer and noticed what appeared to be large tracks in the gravel. I took pictures of these. My friend who is a photographer took a copy of the pictures showing the shadow in the window and enlarged them while trying to keep the clarity and it is possible to make out some of the features. His exact words are ‘it kind of looks like Harry from Harry and the Hendersons.’ I don't know what it was but it was very strange and the photos are quite interesting.”
BFRO field investigator Todd Perteet confirmed that the window to the trailer was eight feet above the ground, conveying some indication of how tall the strange visitor must have been. He also learned that the witnesses had left a television set on all night in the trailer, and that it was possible its flickering screen had attracted the visitor’s attention.
The impressions found in the gravel were also photographed, and seemed to depict a large human footprint measuring between fourteen and sixteen inches long.
Verdict: So what are we to make of these stories of Bigfoot lurking in the mountains near Red River, New Mexico?
Well, for one thing, it is a remote and lonely spot, far from the more populated areas of New Mexico; the place is renowned for its dense forests, its countless miles of hiking trails, and its inaccessible mountain peaks. It is, in other words, the perfect place for an undiscovered, humanoid cryptid to conceal itself from the notice of men…if it’s so inclined.
Plus, the presence of a bustling tourist town like Red River is sure to attract the notice of these creatures from time to time, for surely they must be curious about the goings on of their smaller and far less hirsute putative cousins. So although some stories of Bigfoot in the Red River area must be spurious, I think that many others are not.
The real question—applicable to the Red River Bigfoot as well as all Sasquatch, Skunk Apes, Missouri Monsters (Momos), and other regional HB variants throughout North America—is whether the creatures fall under the purview of scientific cryptozoology or supernatural phenomenology. That’s just a fancy way of saying: are the damned things real survivals of some prehistoric species, or are they the embodiment of something that transcends the physical world?
That’s what we’d all like to know. Perhaps, if we study the phenomenon a little more carefully, and compile more reports like these, we’ll find our answer; I’ll be doing my small part by exploring more stories of Bigfoot and HB sightings in the Western United States in future articles.
In the meantime, if you’ve had any Bigfoot encounters around Red River or in the northern mountains of New Mexico, tell us all about it in the comments section or email me at toddjaquith1@gmail.com.
