Bigfoot, 1958-2002.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Ray L. Wallace died in Centralia, Wash., recently, and with him perished a decades-long conspiracy of silence. Wallace's family has announced to the world that it was he who gave life to the legend of Bigfoot. Yet the legend has acquired a life of its own, and is sure to persist despite the posthumous revelation of Wallace's simple but effective hoax.

Wallace was a life-long practical joker who in the late '50s worked as a logger and road-builder in Humboldt County, Calif. - wild country now, and even wilder back then. In 1958 Wallace asked a friend to carve a pair of 16-inch-long feet from blocks of alder, then strapped them on and tramped around a piece of heavy equipment deep in the woods. News of the giant footprints quickly spread, and Bigfoot became the Northwest's answer to the Abominable Snowman. Wallace helped keep the pot boiling with further hoaxes, such as films, photos of people in gorilla suits and recordings of "Bigfoot sounds."

A good hoax is a thing of beauty. Wallace hurt no one by surreptitiously creating and feeding the Bigfoot myth. He gave countless campfire storytellers a subject for scary tales, fired people's imagination for generations, and even added a dimension to the Northwest's identity.

The runaway success of the hoax is remarkable - as was Wallace's ability to keep his secret under his hat all those years. Wallace had been suspected by some Bigfootologists of having faked evidence of the creature, but his role had never been confirmed until family members spoke after his death. Now, some of the central pieces of documentation for the Bigfoot myth have suffered a blow to whatever credibility they once had.

Yet Bigfoot believers have not lost faith. They insist that other evidence continues to support the existence of a reclusive ape-like creature in the Northwest. Native American stories, they say, corroborate that evidence and date from long before Wallace strapped on his alder feet. It's likely - indeed, certain - that occasional sightings will continue to be reported, and that Bigfoot-hunters will continue to display their plaster-cast footprints and tufts of hair.

There's good reason to hope that the Bigfoot legend continues to thrive. A world in which an unknown species of primate could survive, uncaptured and seldom seen by ever-encroaching human civilization, is a world that still has space for mystery and the unknown. No one can be blamed for wishing to believe the Coast Range, the Cascades and the Siskiyous may still have places so remote and undisturbed that Bigfoot - no, a community of Bigfeet - could live there.

Besides, Wallace isn't the only one who has had fun with Bigfoot. In 1977, then-state Rep. Ted Kulongoski, wearing a gorilla suit, stood on the floor of the Oregon House of Representatives to introduce a resolution to prohibit "harassing, annoying or intimidating" Bigfoot, Sasquatch or a similar creature by any other name. Violators would be required to pick up roadside garbage. Kulongoski will become Oregon's governor next month, guaranteeing that Bigfoot will have friends in high places.