Weird Western Maryland

Georges Creek Boulevard and woods, today. Whenever I start explaining my Weird Western Maryland project, some student immediately says, “Oh, you mean like Bigfoot.” The modern legend of Bigfoot is certainly one of my research interests, as is the wider field of cryptozoology, or the search for unknown animals. Bigfoot also is one of the modern legends best known to my undergraduates, thanks to Hollywood and to decades of T-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, chainsaw art, and other merchandise. And as Western Maryland is largely wooded, students tend to assume that Bigfoot, if it exists at all, abounds regionally. In fact, Bigfoot sightings are not all that common in Western Maryland. (Southwestern Pennsylvania, just across the Mason-Dixon Line, is an entirely different story, one we’ll get to later.) The only Allegany County sighting in the excellent database of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) took place more than 20 years ago and in a surprising, far-from-re...

A roadside attraction that should be better known is the red-eyed Bigfoot statue in Ricky Linaburg’s front yard at 13139 Warrior Drive, a.k.a. Maryland Highway 636 in Cresaptown, between C&J Cycles and Three Guys Guns. Like most such Bigfoot statues, this one seems to be based on Frame 352 of the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film. As the statue is on private property along a busy street, best to gawk at it from one of the nearby parking lots, without trespassing. Sources: “Patterson-Gimlin Film.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterson-Gimlin_film . Accessed 14 Oct. 2021. “Real Property Data Search.” Maryland State Department of Assessments & Taxation search engine. https://sdat.dat.maryland.gov/RealProperty/Pages/default.aspx . Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.  

The author, not a genius, at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, N.C. Photo by Sydney Duncan. Birmingham (Ala.) Black Barons T-shirt from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo.    Welcome to my Fall 2021 sabbatical project! My home institution, Frostburg State University , has granted me time off from teaching and administration to pursue one of my favorite topics more or less full time until mid-January 2022. Below is the complete one-page summary of my project, the one approved this past winter by my (in sequence) department faculty, department chair, dean, university faculty, provost and president. I thank all of them for their support. == “One-page summary of the purpose, goals, and objectives of the Sabbatical/Professional Leave.” Submitted by Andy Duncan in Fall 2020 for a Fall 2021 Sabbatical. I propose to use my sabbatical to start turning my 14 years of habitual note-taking into a readable, comprehensive guide to what, for l...