The Sasquatch of San Juan County
Something doesn't smell right in the Four Corners…
San Juan County is located in the extreme northwestern corner of New Mexico.
It’s a wild and rugged place, which is no surprise given that it’s part of the scenic and beautiful Four Corners region. It’s also known for its many wonders, including the famous Shiprock volcanic formation, the spectacular Aztec Ruins National Monument, and now, apparently…Sasquatch.
Perhaps that shouldn’t come as a great shock, considering San Juan County’s proximity to the Navajo Nation lands. It’s an ancient country with a long and strange history that exists somewhere on the borderland between the world of cold scientific “reality” and that of folklore, myth, and legendry.
There are many peculiar things seen and done in this part of the country, and it’s difficult to determine whether they belong to the realm of cryptozoology or perhaps to the domain of more spiritual and supernatural—and decidedly less material—phenomena. In recent years, for instance, there have been eyewitness accounts of a kind of “Goat-man” haunting the city of Gallup at night. Other, even more unusual sightings include reports of a frightening, winged, demonic creature called the “Night Stalker” (definitely not Kolchak) in Upper Fruitland, as well as creatures seemingly out of Greek myth—including Pegasi, Griffins, and Centaurs—and even prehistoric survivals, such as pterodactyls and small dinosaurs with possibly supernatural powers.
So why shouldn’t Bigfoot be a part of this paranormal or cryptozoological menagerie? After all, compared to the others, he seems downright boring.
In 2016, the search for Sasquatch in northwest New Mexico really started to heat up. It made local headlines, and there was even a fair bit of feigned outrage that taxpayer money was being siphoned off to fund a loony “Bigfoot expedition” by the University of New Mexico—as if the search for a fabled cryptid could even be in the running for the most egregious wastes of taxpayer money.
But all this talk of Sasquatch in San Juan County brought a great deal of attention to the many well-attested accounts of HB sightings in the New Mexican portion of the Four Corners area. As ever, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization is an invaluable mine of data for these encounters, which go back at least four decades, and likely much longer:
July 1980
In Report #490, a Navajo man was herding sheep with his family in the Chuska Mountains, which lie along the New Mexico-Arizona line. The family often had presentiments of strange watchers in the woods, and dogs would bark at and sheep run away from unseen presences in the forest. One day around dusk near a mountain lake, the family’s attention was drawn to something down by a nearby well:
“[The family] stood at the threshold looking down in the direction of the well…They were all whispering in Navajo when I saw something down at the well. I first was excited because I thought it was a black bear. Then I noticed it was a grayish/brown color and was kneeling. I never heard of a bear that could kneel like a man. It looked as if it was washing something off or taking a drink. I had no problem with it until it looked over its shoulder at us and I could see its features. Manlike. That was all I needed to see. I ran into the cabin and hid in the bed under the covers.”
A sensible enough reaction.
In a follow-up investigation, the witness further related stories from his grandfather, who spoke of some creature frequenting the Chuskas that was notorious for its bad smell and its penchant for stealing sheep. The creature apparently had a rather foul disposition, and even once attempted to break into the grandfather’s pickup truck while he was inside it.
Stories also abound of children being pursued by “hairy giant man-like creatures,” and there was a belief that the beings were seasonal and migrated in and out of the Chuskas, since they weren’t always there.1
June 2002
Another sighting in the Chuska Mountains (Report #4538), near Narbona Pass, was reported by a witness (identified only as “D.N.”) who was sitting in the passenger side of a truck and watching the passing scenery, at around 8:30 PM. While looking for something to amuse and distract his bored and fidgety younger cousin, D.N. saw a giant figure in the trees that caused him to do a double-take:
“…I sighted something unusual moving, it was HUGE. It was as tall as the cedar trees that are around there. I was very scared and shaken when I saw it. I thought ‘What the heck is that!’ It looked like a man but, as I was watching it I noticed it had hair covering its whole body with a mixture of grey/dark brown and white on its chest. The head and the feet also the hands were all dark in color and the legs were dark grey. The face was lighter in color and when I saw the face it was turned toward my direction. The forehead was most unusual and it really stuck out with no neck. It had a little slump in the shoulder and its arm spanned down to its knees. It took large steps and its arms swung back and forth. The distance from the highway was about 60 yards, and I told my mom to stop, but she was scared, too scared to turn around.”
The follow-up investigation ascertained that the witness and his family returned to the area the following morning to videotape it and look for any further evidence. A possible footprint was found, and a cast was made, but it was very imperfect due to the hardness of the dry earth. Still, the print was at least 11.5 inches long, and the investigator attested that it conformed to known Sasquatch foot morphology.
The witness also said that the creature must have been between 8-9 feet tall, with a noticeably “pointed” head2 and a protrusive brow ridge. D.N. was apparently a skilled observer, not to say talented artist, as he also submitted a detailed sketch of the creature which he completed the day following the sighting, after calming down and composing his thoughts.
In May of 2009, there was another Bigfoot sighting (Report #26414) in the same general area of the Narbona Pass in the Chuska Mountains; either the same creature has been seen several times, or the Chuskas are home to a significant breeding population of Sasquatch.
The BFRO site records a number of other sightings in San Juan County, but there are plenty more where that came from. For instance, the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization site, of all places, records the Sasquatch sightings of a Mormon who lived near the San Juan River between Farmington and Shiprock. The witness recounted many Bigfoot encounters in the area, including several that were distinctly menacing.
Verdict: It’s probably safe to say that the Sasquatch of San Juan County are among the best-documented and best-attested of their kind in the Southwest.
And the likelihood that the remote and little-visited Chuska Mountains are a kind of ecological redoubt for the creatures is intriguing, to say the least; it’s a part of the country that might benefit from the attentions of a well-equipped expedition. Although, as most of us already know, Bigfoot seem to enjoy their own “uncertainty principle”—the more you look for them, the less likely you are to see them.
If these strange creatures are not, in fact, cryptozoological remnants, but rather partake more of the supernatural than of the natural world, then perhaps it is the presence of the Navajo Nation, with its greater proximity to tradition and the unseen world, that attracts these beings.
Anyhow, these are just my own uninformed musings on the subject. Far better to rely on the informed opinion of one Brenda Harris, surnamed in some quarters the “Navajo Buffy” (as in “Vampire-Slayer”), but in truth more like a one-woman “X-Files” investigator.
After discovering the tracks of a ’squatch in her yard in Upper Fruitland, Harris made it something of her mission in life to investigate the many paranormal phenomena of San Juan County. Never send a man to do a woman’s job, they say, and sometimes when you want something done, you just have to do it yourself; dismayed at the lack of official or other interest in investigating the strange goings-on in the county, Harris decided to cowgirl up and suss things out for herself.
The result? Bigfoot photographs, biological samples, and even evidence of something else stalking the land at night…a kind of chupacabras that kills the goats and sheep of local ranchers, which Harris believes is a flying creature, likening it to the Jersey Devil, and which is possibly identical to the aforementioned “Night Stalker.”
In any case, Harris has assembled her own theories and list of observable facts about the Sasquatch of San Juan County, noting—among other things—that the creatures:
Probably live in caves in the “mountains” north of the prominent Hogback feature near Waterflow, NM (possibly upon Mesa Verde, or even in the Ute and La Plata Mountains of Colorado?), and venture down to the San Juan River to gather corn and melons from the agricultural fields;
Smell awful;
Are most often seen at night, though they occasionally appear in the daytime;
Consist of a small colony of at least three or more individuals;
Are drawn to women and children, and the sound of laughter;
May be more spiritual in nature than physical;
Make a variety of sounds and calls, most notably “a very creepy, lonely-sounding scream.”
And that’s about as comprehensive an account of these creatures as we have any right to expect. There’s certainly something strange and not-quite-human abroad in San Juan County, so the next time you happen to travel through the Chuska Mountains, or drive along the lonely stretches of Highway 491 of nights between Gallup, NM and Cortez, CO, do yourself a favor and keep an eye out for the Sasquatch of San Juan County.
It may not smell great, and sometimes it might even display a foul temper, but seeing one is an experience you’ll never forget…
See the theories of Brenda Harris, below.
The “pointed head” seems to be one of the commonest—as well as strangest—aspects of Bigfoot cranial morphology. Is it something like the sagittal crest of a gorilla, which acts as an attachment point for the animal’s huge jaw muscles?