Cliff Barackman & the North American Bigfoot Center in Oregon's "Least-Interesting" Town

Cliff Barackman / Boring, Oregon city sign

We’ve heard the jokes before, many times. Anyone who grew up near Portland, Oregon has heard people mocking the small town of Boring, located in the foothills of Mt. Hood. “Nothing much to do there, huh?” people would say and laugh heartily when they first heard the name of the town, while longtime residents would roll their eyes and sigh. 

Mt. Hood reflected in Enid Lake

Enter Cliff Barackman. This former elementary school teacher and his wife, Melissa, have together dramatically altered the reputation of what was once thought of as Oregon’s least interesting town. Boring, Oregon (yes, that's the town's real name) is now home to the North American Bigfoot Center, a 3500 square-foot space off Highway 26. 

Cliff & Melissa Barackman

Simultaneously a museum, a gift shop, and an educational center for continuing research into the mysterious bipedal hominoid (human-like creature) known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch, the NABC has the Pacific Northwest’s largest known, public collection of Sasquatch evidence and artifacts on display.

Exterior view of the North American Bigfoot Center

“The real magic is in the back room in the display hall,” explains Barackman. “That’s where we have informational panels on footprint morphology and handprint shapes and a number of photographs and pieces of video footage that pass my muster, and I’m a skeptic. I’m convinced they’re real, and I don’t believe everything that’s out there,” he continues. 

Exhibit at NABC

Barackman chose to set up the NABC in Boring partly because it’s near his home, but also because it is in Clackamas County, which has the highest number of Sasquatch sightings in Oregon. One of the most exciting aspects of the NABC, to Barackman, is the number of people who come in and talk about their encounters with Bigfoot, some of which occurred decades ago, and some which have occurred just in the past few days.

Exhibit at NABC

“Someone came in just a couple days ago and told me about a sighting on Highway 26,” Barackman says. “I went out there that very morning and cast some of the tracks while they were still really fresh.”

Barackman at the NABC

A longtime Bigfoot evidence analyst and researcher, Barackman first became known to members of the public through his work on the the Animal Planet/Discovery Plus television program, “Finding Bigfoot”. In the show, investigators travel to Bigfoot hot spots, look for evidence and try to encounter a Sasquatch for themselves. “It’s been so much fun to work on the show, and viewers always say they can tell that we love what we do,” Barackman exclaims. 

Promotional image for Finding Bigfoot program

His focus always returns to the evidence for Sasquatch. “There is so much evidence here,” Barackman continues. “You can see a lot of it and you can even buy evidence at the NABC, in the sense that you can buy copies of casts (footprints) that I’ve made, copies of casts from people such as Tom Shea from Kentucky, one of the best investigators to ever live….you can buy copies of his handprints and footprints, and ones from Dr. Jeff Meldrum, an anatomy professor from Idaho.”

Exhibit of casts (footprints) at NABC

"My goal with the NABC is basically to educate," Barackman explains. "I’m like a single subject teacher on the subject of Sasquatch and I want to educate the public that they are real,” he states.

Has Barackman personally encountered Bigfoot? “Yes, I think so,” he says. “I saw one at night, through a thermal imager, which shows heat. I saw a tall, human-shaped figure navigating the wooded hillside without a light at two o clock in the morning, quickly outpacing us…it had the same heat signature all over, on a cold night, so it definitely had no clothing on in February, on a freezing cold night. We also heard vocalizations on that hillside later that night,” he recalls.  

“I’ve also had rocks thrown at me in the middle of the day and at night. I’ve been screamed at from close range, I’ve tracked them, I’ve smelled them, and I’ve spoken to thousands of people who have had their own encounters, people with nothing to gain and everything to lose. Are all those people lying or wrong? If even one of them is not, then the species is real,” Barackman states. 

Barackman's book, Finding Bigfoot: Everything You Need To Know

A frequent speaker at conferences and events, Barackman is the author of the book, Finding Bigfoot: Everything You Need To Know. He has created a presentation called “Bigfoot: Best Evidence”, which has garnered over one million views on Youtube, and he is the cohost of a podcast called “Bigfoot and Beyond, with Cliff and Bobo.”

For more information about Cliff Barackman, visit CliffBarackman.com or NorthAmericanBigfootCenter.com. He can also be found on Facebook at CliffBarackman, on Twitter @CliffBarackman, or on Instagram at Cliff.Barackman.

Cliff Barackman will be a featured speaker at Forks Sasquatch Days in Forks, Washington May 26-28, 2023. For tickets, visit Forks Sasquatch Days. 

By Christina Hebert

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