Wild Things

A mystery hides in the rolling hills of Clay County surrounding Smithville Lake. Clues can be found off County Road W in the little community of Paradise.

The footprints in the parking lot. The shadowy figure. And, oh, the smell.

The smell, actually, is more of an aroma leading to one of the best hamburgers in the Northland cooking up on the grill at Captain’s Corner. The burger is two pounds of meat and a pound of tater tots. It’s called the Bigfoot Burger.

“I don’t have an obsession with Bigfoot,” says owner Katherine Wald, “but I wonder…”

Katherine’s lifelong fascination with Bigfoot materialized in 2021 when she installed a Bigfoot sculpture outside the business and printed big footprints across the parking lot.

That’s also when she initiated “the Bigfoot Challenge.” Eat the entire two-pound burger and tater tots in less than 30 minutes and you get, in addition to an immediate rise in your cholesterol level, a T-shirt. In the past three years, 60 customers have tried. Only 30 have succeeded.

“I just think the whole idea of Bigfoot is a lot of fun and it brings people together,” she said. Katherine has hidden 12 Bigfoot images around Paradise and is working on a scavenger hunt-type event to debut next summer.

Other than the burgers and creative fun in Paradise, there’s been little Bigfoot activity around Smithville Lake. About 20 years ago, some college kids reported seeing something late at night, but that’s about it.

Mitch Jackson is a natural resource manager for the Corps of Engineers and spends a lot of time outdoors in Clay County.

“You would think this would be a good spot for Bigfoot, but I’ve not seen anything or talked to others who have seen anything,” he says.

There’s not a lot of activity around Weston either, although the city hosts a Bigfoot Search each April. The idea is to visit shops and search for clues. The winners receive a Bigfoot statue donated by Beverlin’s Statuary at 419 Main Street.

While there are several conferences and festivals to enjoy around the country and Midwest, the closest Bigfoot museum is about four hours away in Hastings, Nebraska.

This is where, in the 1950s, Harriett McFeely found a woolly mammoth bone while exploring the banks of the Republican River. Little eight-year-old Harriet entered her find in a school science fair and won first place. That was the beginning of her lifelong interest in anthropology.

About the same time, she saw a news report of Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mt. Everest. There, where no human had ever been before, Harriett saw a large, non-human footprint in the snow as big as a pickax. She began to wonder what else was out there.

Over the years, Harriett attended conferences across the country and personally investigated Bigfoot sightings in Nebraska and beyond. These experiences are the basis of the Bigfoot Crossroads of America Museum that opened adjacent to Harriett’s home in Hastings in 2017.

When we visited, the first thing Harriett asked was “Are you a Bigfooter?” No one had ever asked me that before.

Harriett is a Bigfooter, but a more accurate term is cryptozoologist – a person who studies mysterious animals whose existence is disputed. Bigfoot is a cryptid. So is Sasquatch. And the Loch Ness Monster and Florida’s Skunk Ape. You get the idea.

So, I told Harriett about the Big Muddy Monster in southern Illinois. That’s where I grew up, where the Big Muddy River flows into the Mississippi. Every time the rivers rise above flood stage, sightings of a large, hairy, smelly creature begin. The belief is that the Big Muddy Monster lives in a cave in the LaRue-Pine Hills that floods when the rivers are out of their banks. When in high school, my friends and I went on several escapades searching for the critter with no success.

Harriett was fascinated and took notes. At slightly more than 5 feet tall with a shock of bright red hair, Harriett takes in stride that not everyone shares her belief in Bigfoot. She unabashedly leads you through exhibits that showcase footprint castings, woven tree saplings and braided horse manes.

In addition to developing her museum and researching Bigfoot sightings, Harriett coordinates the Nebraska Bigfoot Conference in Grand Island each April.

For more information on the Hastings Bigfoot Museum, visit nebraskabigfootmuseum.com or visithastings.com, (Hastings is also the birthplace of Kool-Aid, so double reason for a visit). You can find the Bigfoot Burger and its footprints at Captain's Corner in Smithville, captainscornerparadise.com.