Remer, the ‘Home of Bigfoot,’ draws thousands of believers and curiosity-seekers to festival

REMER, Minn. - At an annual festival dedicated to bigfoot, the question isn’t if you believe in bigfoot. It’s have you seen one.

“I want to say yes, but it could have been a shadow,” 10-year-old Michael Winn of Roseville said.

Next summer will mark a decade since this town of 400 nestled along Hwy. 200 east of Leech Lake began hosting Bigfoot Days, an event that mushrooms the city’s population over a weekend in July. Saturday was the second day of the two-day event.

Thousands from across Minnesota and as far as Colorado come to visit the Home of Bigfoot, a trademarked designation.

“So we have some claim to fame here,” said resident Shawn Dickinson, 59, whose closet is full of bigfoot Hawaiian shirts. He sported one Saturday of bigfoots holding beer.

The town has embraced this bigfoot identity. Its gas station, auto repair shop and little free library are bigfoot-themed. The cafe serves bigfoot burgers and bigfoot hashbrowns.

Seemingly every window, door and sign in town is adorned with a bigfoot silhouette.

Since 2016, Remer has become a magnet for bigfoot believers and researchers. The Minnesota Bigfoot Research Team (yes, the MN.B.R.T. is real) frequents Remer and sets up a table at Bigfoot Days to meet folks, guide hunts and sign autographs.

Like any family-friendly gathering in the summer, the event features standard fare: pancake breakfast, 5K race, flea market, scavenger hunt. Unlike a typical summer festival, the highlights of Bigfoot Days include bigfoot calling contests and bigfoot storytelling.

Ten-year-old Michael tied for first place in the kids’ calling contest with Drake Wavrin, 9, of Medford, Minn., following in the footsteps of his big sister who won the contest two years ago.

The adults hold their competitions in the evening at the bar and have plenty of bigfoot stories to share over drinks.

Because if you aren’t lucky enough to snag sasquatch on camera, the next best thing is a dang good story about an encounter.

“Here comes the goosebumps,” Abe Del Rio, who founded MN.B.R.T. 25 years ago, said as he shared his scariest bigfoot sighting to a captivated audience of children and adults under a packed pavilion Saturday.

Del Rio said bigfoot is a hobby — and an obsession. He described sasquatch as “the stealthiest” and cautioned the crowd that not everything they see or hear is bigfoot.

“We’re very self-disciplined [and] keep the facts straight,” he said.

In 2009, Tim Kedrowski’s trail camera on his family’s hunting land in Remer captured a blurry image of a towering, dark figure with long arms. The image made headlines worldwide.

Some thought it was a hoax, so Kedrowski contacted the MN.B.R.T. Del Rio said it wasn’t a bigfoot, and instead was likely a person in a gorilla costume.

Kedrowski, who died last year, wasn’t a bigfoot believer, said son Casey Kedrowski of Rice, Minn. But without the trail camera image, he said, Remer couldn’t lay claim to bigfoot like the way it does today.

Lifelong Remer resident Marc Ruyak agreed.

Ruyak trademarked Remer as the Home of Bigfoot, a designation he said was solidified after the reputed 2009 sighting. He has studied local reports of alleged bigfoot sightings dating back to the early 1900s, when town founder William P. Remer discovered massive footprints.

“There were so many sightings and so much historical information,” Ruyak said. “I said, ‘You know what? We’re like the home of Bigfoot.’”

The marketing stunt plays into the everlasting lure and mystery of bigfoot, aka sasquatch, with deep roots in the Pacific Northwest. In California, the city of Willow Creek claims to be the bigfoot capital.

“Finding Bigfoot,” the popular Animal Planet TV show, was filmed in Remer in 2016, and Ruyak said the crew agreed the town was a bigfoot hotbed.

And it makes sense to believers. Remer lies within the Chippewa National Forest, a vast wilderness with a rich logging history and plenty of spots for bigfoots to elude tourists.

Two women recently flew from Great Britain to Remer, stayed at the bigfoot-themed motel and went out looking, Ruyak said. A group of friends from Minneapolis decided to come up for a hunt, too.

“We wanted to come up here and see if we could go squatching,” said Brian Kaul, 36, an actuary who wasn’t sure if he wanted to spend $150 for a guided hunt.

His friend Ryan Mork, 35, a biophysicist, said the monetization of bigfoot is unfortunate, but “it’s all in good fun.”

They were among the estimated 4,000 visitors in Remer over the weekend. Ruyak said he expects even more next year.

“It has just grown and grown,” he said. “The biggest thing, and we talk about it all the time, is that we want to remove the stigma around bigfoot. Everyone will talk to you about bigfoot in our town.”

For the 10-year anniversary of Bigfoot Days next summer, a 25-foot tall permanent sasquatch statue is being erected in the middle of town — big enough for UFOs to spot.