Sasquatch has been named the official animal of the Village of Whitehall.

Bigfoot sightings date back to the Iroquois and Algonquin nations. In the early 1970s, several sightings of the hairy man creature were reported at a local golf course. Overtime, the sightings have led to the town of Whitehall passing a law protecting the Sasquatch in the early part of the 21st Century.

Bigfoot has become a large part of the local economy with an annual half-marathon and festival in honor of Sasquatch.

Joe Kelley, owner of Bigfoot Wine and Liquor, was the first to put up one of the multiple statues of Bigfoot around town.

“This has been here, probably, I’m going to say 12 to 14 years, and I bet you there have been at least 4,000 or 5,000 families that come sit here and take pictures,” he said.

Bigfoot even has a breakfast named for him at Historic Grounds, which is owned by Nat Huntington.

“Yep, it’s a breakfast sandwich that has two eggs, two cheeses, two meats, and it comes on either a bagel or English muffin or toast, and it’s fairly large, so we call it The Bigfoot,” he said.

Huntington’s family has been in the area since 1760, and the first they heard about the Sasquatch was the stories about the sightings at a local golf course in the 1970s.

“I think the people that saw it probably saw something that they truly believed,” Huntington said.

Whether you believe in Bigfoot or not, the Village of Whitehall put him in the official record as the village’s new official animal.