Taking U.S. Highway 285 West for about an hour outside of Denver, you’ll find yourself smack-dab in the middle of Sasquatch—also known as Bigfoot—territory. The quiet mountain town of Bailey, CO, is a hotbed for the cryptid’s activity and stories of sightings are abundant. The Sasquatch Outpost, housed in an unsuspecting building on Main Street, allows locals to share their encounters with one of America’s most infamous mythological creatures.
“We started off as a grocery store,” said Karine Myers, an employee at The Sasquatch Outpost and daughter of owner Jim Myers. “My dad has had a passion for Bigfoot ever since he watched The Legend of Boggy Creek as a kid, so he started a little part of the museum in the back and that ended up making way more revenue than the groceries were.”
If you build it they will come and the Myers family, joined by folks in town, transformed the business into one of the nation’s premier Bigfoot museums.
“Soon, the locals started coming in and they’d wait until nobody was in the shop to tell [my dad] their encounter stories. When he realized, ‘Oh my gosh, Bigfoot is actually here in Bailey.’ It just kinda blew up from there,” Karine said.
Despite the lack of concrete evidence to conclusively prove Bigfoot’s existence, locals around the Bailey area often report their sightings and evidence of the beast to the Myers family. The family then investigates each report to decide if it was in fact a real encounter or not.
“We’ve had sightings all around Wellington Lake towards Fairplay,” Karine said. “We’ve had them in neighborhoods when it snows, we’ll have locals ask us to come check some footprints in their driveways. Often it’s a bear, but every now and then we do find Bigfoot.”
Inside The Sasquatch Outpost, visitors will notice that the business is split into two distinct halves. The first half is experiencing the largest Bigfoot memorabilia store in the United States, jammed-packed with all the stickers—like the notorious “I Believe” bumper stickers—and any shirt a fan could ever want. The second half is a carefully curated Sasquatch Encounter Discovery Museum, full of artifacts believed to be from run-ins with sasquatches.
On display are several items claimed to have been left by Bigfoot like multiple casted foot imprints and an American flag ripped and then braided. A life-sized animatronic hides amidst a fake forest, its eyes eerily human. Visitors can get up close and personal with Bigfoot history, including the opportunity to interact with several displays.
“I love the audio [display] that we have,” Karine said. “What’s weird about the audio is a lot of people have been doing research on the dialect, but there seems to be a language that they can speak. It almost sounds Japanese to me, that’s what fascinates me the most.”
Since fully converting their business into a cathedral dedicated to the Sasquatch, the Myers family has welcomed and encouraged locals and visitors to share stories of their brushes with the legendary beast. The museum lends a safe, non-judgemental ear and hopes to connect folks who have had bone-chilling experiences with Bigfoot.
“I get at least one story every week,” Karine said. “I’ve been working here for a year and a half and not one week has gone by where I haven’t heard one story.”
Karine herself wasn’t a believer before she started helping out with her father’s business, but that changed during her time at the museum. The raw emotions that people display when recalling their encounters proved to be enough to convert her into a believer.
“I am [a believer] now but I wasn’t when I started off,” she said. “Especially when you see people recount their stories and how emotional they get. One guy was telling his story and he just started sweating bullets. As soon as he was done, he went right back to normal.”
Since becoming a believer, Karine has had her own encounter with Sasquatch. On an expedition with seven others led by her dad near Wellington Lake, she said she was able to make visual confirmation of the beast.
“We saw this little orange light in the distance, and I thought, ‘Nah, it’s gotta be someone else.’ But it just stood still,” Karine recalled. “I thought that I’d just make a large ‘woop’ sound, and this one orange light turned into two. The guy behind me went ‘Oh s***!’ We were able to confirm it when we saw the head turning to the left and right. It was really cool.”
For those looking to make the trek from Denver to Bailey to experience Bigfoot wonderland, the museum is open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The experience is also relatively inexpensive, as adults can get a ticket for $8 and children can get in for $4.
Anyone who wishes to report an encounter can do so at the museum by talking to an employee or filling out a form electronically on their website. Every report remains confidential and is used as research by the Myers family to help further prove the existence of Bigfoot. If you’ve ever had a run-in but nobody believes you, The Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey will be more than happy to hear you out.
“We’ve got people coming in here all the time to share their stories,” Karine said. “It’s just a place where people can be validated with their experiences.”
