Bigfoot Jamboree

The Bigfoot Jamboree fills River Park in Happy Camp over Labor Day weekend. The park lies in Siskiyou County at the top of California, on the Klamath River where Indian and Elk Creeks come in, deep in the Klamath National Forest. Admission and parking are free. Over three days the program runs to a pancake breakfast, a barbecue, bingo, a ducky derby, water slides, a softball tournament, a 5-kilometer run, a talent show, karaoke, live bands and DJs, a dance, and the crowning of a Bigfoot King and Queen.

Friday night to Sunday at River Park

The festival opens on Friday. In 2007 the Bigfoot Queen was crowned that evening at six in the River Park Pavilion, and the teen dance began once the queen and her court had been presented. In 2022 the Palmeter Family made Indian tacos for the Friday crowd, and a band called Rock Candy played the dance that followed. That year the craft tables, the poker, and the beer booth stayed open from Friday afternoon until the event closed on Sunday. Judy Bushy of Happy Camp News added a note in parentheses: “Happy Campers love having food at every gathering.”

Saturday belongs to the vendors and to what Bushy called “the traditional Salmon BBQ.” In 2007 a man named Bill Cook was the cook. In 2026 the organizers asked for teams for a horseshoe tournament, after many people had requested one, with games set for Saturday at one o’clock. Each player who paid the fee was promised a free beer, and root beer floats were offered to those under 21.

The ground under all of it was made for the occasion. Bushy wrote that River Park was once about 30 acres grown over with blackberry brush before it was cleared for the Jamboree. Dogs other than service dogs are not allowed, and neither are bicycles, backpacks, or outside alcohol. Under the liquor license, no alcohol is sold after midnight.

Since 2018 the Jamboree has been run by a six-member committee within the nonprofit Happy Camp Community Action, Inc. The committee has no paid staff. In 2026 its president was Abigail Tower and its vice president Kyle Day, with Kirk Eadie as secretary-treasurer and Charlie Fehley, Abigail Yeager, and Linda Zink as members.

The Sunday parade down Highway 96

The parade runs Sunday morning. In 2026 it was set for September 6, from 11 a.m. to noon. Bushy described the route in 2007. Floats, marchers, and riders gathered between the post office and Parry’s Market, set off from Davis Road, went down Highway 96 to Second Avenue, and turned there to cross the bridge over Indian Creek.

At the corner of Highway 96 and Davis Road stands a Bigfoot statue made of scrap metal. The material came from a river cleanup in early 2001, when Cheryl Wainwright organized the town to gather the litter in the Forest Service parking lot. The sculptor Ralph Starritt, known for turning junk into art, came to town to build it. Frontier Café, Evans Mercantile, Clinic Pharmacy, and the Forest Service helped pay for supplies, equipment, and his lodging. Bushy wrote that it took longer than expected, that “the whole community watched,” and that visitors are usually seen taking photographs with “the big guy.”

The committee’s list of what passes by includes floats, candy, horses, fire engines, queens, princes and princesses, old cars, emergency vehicles, “and Maybe Even Bigfoot.” Each year has a theme and grand marshals, who are often a married couple. The themes have included “Summer Time Antics” (1994), “Miner’s Paradice” (2000), “Happy Camp 150th Birthday” (2001), “Life in Bear Country” (2002), “Swimming Holes, Fishing Poles and Mountain Trolls” (2003), “40 Years in Search of Bigfoot” (2006), “Board Games” (2022), and “The Greatest Show On Earth” (2025), when Dorcas Harrison was grand marshal.

Bushy reported the 2009 parade in detail. Its theme was “The Heritage of Happy Camp,” and Don Zink was grand marshal. Double J and ABC Logging built the first-place commercial float together. Elk Creek Campground took second with a little cabin carrying Charlotte as Stella Patterson, along with “DearSir” and “UpandUp,” characters from Patterson’s memoir Dear Mad’m. Among the organizations, the Family Resource Center won first place. Tom White, on horseback with his POW flag, took second, and Smokey and the Forest Service took third. Bigfoot, Bushy wrote, “was especially energetic this time and even got into a tussle with some of the men,” and he won the individual category. Tom and Linda Seals followed in their 1923 T-bucket roadster. The grand prize went to the Karuk Dancers float, which carried Shauniece, Stormy, Mikala, and Mac Polmateer, Jay Jay, Charley, Jason, and Rony Reed, and David Arwood.

A square dance on Bridge Street

The town’s own Bigfoot story predates the festival. In her history of Happy Camp, Bushy relates that miners in the Thompson Creek area saw a large, ape-like creature that scared the Chinese miners so badly they would not go back to work for days. The Jamboree’s organizers name the event for him: “Having Bigfoot as one of our neighbors, we decided if we named the event after him, he might show up. So far, he has turned down our invitations.”

The sources disagree on the first year. The festival’s website says the first Jamboree was held in 1967 and dates the first parade to September 4, 1967. Bushy and Visit California both give 1966. By Bushy’s account, “What began as a musical square dance on Bridge Street (now 2nd Avenue)” grew into the year’s main event. In a 2016 comment she named George Swem as an original founder “when the Happy Camp Square Dance began the event.”

Swem’s son-in-law’s line of the family is not recorded, but a reader named Vern Andrews posted an obituary for him in 2010. Swem came to Happy Camp in 1959 with his new wife, Luella. He worked as a logger, opened a 76 station in 1960, and in 1966 opened the G & L Tire and Retread shop with Luella, which they owned until 2003. He belonged to the Happy Camp Square Dance Club. Andrews wrote that “George and Luella along with another couple were instrumental in forming the Bigfoot Jamboree.” Swem died on September 7, 2009, in Medford, the Monday after that year’s parade.

On May 24, 1967, the Eureka Humboldt Times reported that a Happy Camp coordinating committee would hold a contest for a queen “who will reign over the Bigfoot Jamboree on Labor Day weekend.” Single girls between 15 and 18 in the Happy Camp High attendance area were eligible, and the contest was to run from June 1 to August 25. The chairman’s name comes through the scanned text as Mrs. B. P. Durey. The same item says the committee was weighing the cost of advertising in southern Oregon and northern California, and that local artists were drawing brochures.

Fire years

Fires cancelled the Jamboree in 1987. Bushy called it “a very rare situation.” No Jamboree was held in 1993. In 1994 the Happy Camp Coordinating Council, led by Rick Huston, revived it, with Charley “Cowboy” Hockaday as grand marshal. Huston and his wife, Leslie, were grand marshals themselves in 2015.

The Slater Fire came in September 2020, and there was no Jamboree that year. The 2021 theme was “Heros of the Slater Fire.” In 2022 Bushy wrote that the Karuk Tribe had brought in trailers and RVs, that homes were slowly going up again, that the Yeti Fire had threatened the town, and that neighbors down the Klamath River had been through the McKinney Fire. Of those who had not yet returned, she wrote: “They may pitch a tent in the campgrounds or a backyard, but we hope to see them for the Bigfoot Jamboree!!”