Arizona Department of Transportation Bigfoot Evidence

On Jan 1, 2015, the Arizona Department of Transportation posted this photograph of a street with the following caption: "We might have spotted a family of sasquatches on SR 260 near Heber this afternoon." on their official Facebook page. Now quite honestly I believe for the majority of people when they read the caption and saw the picture pretty much figured out it must’ve been some kind of joke. Nonetheless, the picture provoked a tremendous amount of debate about the picture whether it was a genuine or a hoax.

And as I said, I was fascinated by that. I went back to my room at the hotel and there was a lot of debate about whether this was a hoax or not. And I realized that you can’t really know what is true or what is a hoax until it’s revealed. Furthermore, the image is so compelling and so enigmatic because it is just one of those images that you can’t explain the way it presents itself. You can’t get rid of it no matter how hard you try. So I started thinking about all kinds of things about it and it’s very difficult to make any kind of sense of that. So I began to think about all kinds of stories that we could tell about this. One possibility is that it’s a hoax, but another possibility is that it is actually true and it represents something else.

Arizona Department of Transportation Bigfoot

The viral picture of what appeared to be possibly a Bigfoot family in Arizona obviously had the Bigfoot community and conspiracy theory fanatics looking for answers. Conspiracy theories began to propagate after they posted the photo from a highway patrol camera. The Facebook post now has been shared hundreds of times and filled with thousands of comments as well. The Facebook comments ranged from true Bigfoot believers to hard-core skeptics. Many of the true believers were worried about the safety and the health of the alleged Bigfoot family and demanded more pictures to be made available.

Sadly, eventually, the truth came out and the Arizona Department of Transportation put an end to all of the speculations by admitting it was just all a big joke. "We always try to have a little fun with our Facebook and Twitter feeds," department spokesman Tim Tait told ABC News. "That way, we don’t just post news about crashes and road conditions, but a little something to engage our audience in different ways. This posting was one of those efforts -- something that caught our attention, and we thought it might make some people chuckle."

Oh well, here's hoping the department continues to have a sense of humor in the face of tragedy. "It really is a small community, and when you get this kind of news, it does hit home," said Tait. "I've had a number of people come up to me in the last day or two and tell me how much they appreciated the post, or that it helped them deal with the loss of someone in the family or that it made them smile."