Raymond L. Wallace, 83
Bigfoot Story Teller
(1919-2002)
Ray Wallace, a controversial figure involved in 44 years of Bigfoot-related
events, died November 26, 2002, in Toledo, Washington.  The Washington State
construction tycoon had been ill for some time, living in a Toledo rest
home.
It was at Bluff Creek, California, in 1958, which found Ray Wallace¹s
company building a new road through the northern California forest.   In
August through October, Wallace Construction Company's employee Jerry Crew
found tracks of a huge humanlike foot.  Thanks to instructions from
taxidermist Bob Titmus, Crew made the first plaster casts of a footprint
from this hairy upright creature his fellow workers called ³Bigfoot.²  Crew
took the cast to town, to quiet local ridicule, and showed it to a Humboldt
County newspaper editor.  The photograph of Jerry Crew with the giant
plaster of Paris foot imprint went out over the newswires.   It produced a
revolutionary shift from small regional stories of Sasquatch to today¹s
global awareness of Bigfoot. Soon after the publicized Crew finds, Wallace
and his brother claimed other Bigfoot activity around the construction site;
Wallace said he found tracks and droppings of Bigfoot.
Wallace was to be involved with the local tales of hairy giants for the rest
of his life.  Allegedly in the later in the 1950s, for example, Wallace
offered to sell Texas millionaire Tom Slick a captured Bigfoot.  Wallace
failed to produce the creature when Slick came up with an offer. Down
through the years, Wallace would carry on pranks, be tied to carved fake
Sasquatch feet, and produce and try to sell dubious photographs and films.
He was a great letter writer and would pen long passages to magazine editors
about this photographs or telling of how he knew a Bigfoot was nearby
guarding a mine full of gold.  After awhile, most Bigfoot hunters and
researchers took Wallace as merely a spinner of fanciful tall tales. Through
his contributions to Strange Magazine, the Track Record, and indirectly to
Fate Magazine, Wallace relished keeping his name in the limelight of the
Bigfoot mystery.
In March 1998, Ray Wallace offered a million dollars to the first person who
could bring him a live baby Bigfoot.  Saying he had tracked Bigfoot for
forty years, Wallace claimed he wanted to raise a young Sasquatch to
adulthood. Wallace told reporters he planned to raise a baby Bigfoot with
³care and respect² and would like to train the creature to ride around with
him in his pickup truck and help out with chores around his ranch.  No one
came forth with a baby Bigfoot.
Ray Wallace added an intriguing, mostly harmless story-telling element to
the otherwise often serious pursuit of Bigfoot that various friends of his,
such as Ray Crowe, Director of the International Bigfoot Society, enjoyed.
Ray Wallace was interred at the Lone Hill Cemetery in Toledo, Washington
State, on November 30, 2002.
©Loren Coleman 2002
http://www.lorencoleman.com
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