Drive County Road 130 west out of Vergas after dark and the gravel gets narrower before it gets wider again. Locals still call one stretch the Lost Highway. It runs into the old Klondike backcountry, the same five-mile run of low-maintenance roads where, for the better part of three decades, people kept seeing something they couldn't explain. If you live on Franklin Lake, you've probably driven past that turnoff without thinking twice. But the story behind it says more about how this corner of Otter Tail County actually filled in than most people realize.
The Stretch of Road Where It Started
The earliest account traces to 1966, when Ken Zitzow was driving County Road 130 with his brother Duane and Duane's girlfriend Pam. Something walked out of the woods and hit the trunk of the car hard enough to leave a dent. Zitzow described it decades later, in a 1991 Detroit Lakes Tribune interview, as looking like Bigfoot. He and his brother went back later to track the thing's den, found an abandoned shack thick with the smell of a wild animal, and burned it down.
A year after that, Dave Bruhn had his own encounter nearby, when the creature jumped onto the hood of his car from a cutting along the trail. In 1972, twelve-year-old Cheryl Hanson was snowmobiling with her cousin Jolyn near an old cabin off the Lost Highway when a broad-shouldered figure came out of it holding a stick. What stuck with her, she said later, wasn't the size. It was that the thing was barefoot in the snow. By 1976 the legend had traveled far enough that Mike Quast reported seeing something similar near Strawberry Lake, north of Detroit Lakes, and produced plaster footprints that are now held by the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.
The sightings clustered tightly, mostly within that same five-mile band off County Road 130 and a second pocket along County Road 17 leading into the Vergas Trails. That geography matters more than the creature itself.
Why the Sightings Stopped
By the time SyFy's Haunted Highway sent investigators Jael de Pardo and Devin Marble to spend an overnight in the Klondike in 2012, the sightings had already gone quiet for close to two decades. That same Hanson, now grown, has a theory that has nothing to do with the creature losing interest. As she's put it, the land back there used to be held in large parcels, and the people who owned it may not have wanted company. Once those owners started selling, the roads got redone, homeowners moved in, and the sightings tapered off along with the empty acreage.
That's the part of the story a Franklin Lake resident should actually sit with. The Hairyman didn't get chased out. The Klondike simply stopped being the kind of place where a legend could hide. The last widely reported sighting came sometime in the 1990s, which lines up with when that stretch of Otter Tail County started looking more like a neighborhood and less like the back forty.
From Trail Fundraiser to Town Tradition
The festival that carries the legend's name today wasn't built to chase Bigfoot. It started as a way to pay for the Long Lake Trail, the paved path that connects downtown Vergas to the city beach and continues onto a floating boardwalk and a primitive trail overlooking the water. Once the trail was paid off, the fundraising committee disbanded. The Vergas Community Club decided the event itself was worth keeping, less for the money and more for what it had become: a shared story the whole town could rally around every fall.
That shift changed what the day looks like. The original 5K run is gone, replaced by family events, and the club added a side-by-side trail ride through the same backroads where the sightings once happened. The first year it ran, organizers initially estimated more than 100 riders showed up. The official count came in at 184.
| Original Event | Current Festival | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Fund the Long Lake Trail boardwalk | Community Club tradition, no fundraising target |
| Signature activity | 5K run | Side-by-side trail ride through the Vergas Trails |
| First-year turnout | N/A | 184 riders, more than double early estimates |
What Saturday, September 26 Actually Looks Like
This year's Hairyman Festival lands on September 26, and the Vergas Community Club's own event listing keeps the formula simple: come for the side-by-side trail ride, stay for the shopping, games, and live music. Based on how the club has run it in recent years, the day tends to include:
- A side-by-side and ATV ride out through the Klondike backroads
- A farmer's market set up downtown
- Pumpkin races, sack races, and three-legged races for families
- Bean bag boards running most of the afternoon
- Food from the Vergas Lions
- Live music closing out the evening
None of it requires believing in anything. It requires showing up, which is more or less the point the Community Club landed on once the trail fund closed out.
Where Everyone Ends Up After
Downtown Vergas isn't large, but it doesn't need to be for a festival Saturday to fill it. Otter Coffee and Ice Cream has become the morning stop for anyone heading to the farmer's market, pouring Stumbeano's coffee roasted in Fergus Falls alongside locally sourced pastries and biscotti. Loons Nest still holds its reputation as the place for a basic, fast breakfast before a day of festival events. Nootzi's On Main, known around town for its caramel rolls, has changed names over the years but not its draw.
By evening, the choice usually comes down to Blackboard, a converted schoolhouse now serving contemporary plates in a building that used to hold a classroom, or The Fireside, where reservations are worth making if walleye is on your mind. Either way, festival night in Vergas tends to end at a table, not a bonfire in the Klondike.
The Legend the Lake Grew Around
Franklin Lake residents already know the World's Largest Loon towers 20 feet over town, and locals are quick to note it's a different bird entirely from the World's Largest Floating Loon out on Silver Lake. That kind of specificity is exactly what makes Vergas feel like a real place instead of a postcard, and it's the same specificity that turned a decades-old scare into a festival worth putting on the calendar every September.
The Hairyman may or may not still be out there. What's certain is that the roads he was supposedly seen on are the same ones lined with homes now, and the trail his legend once helped fund is the same one you can walk from downtown to the beach today. That's not a coincidence. That's just what happens when a place fills in around its own stories.
If you're already living the Franklin Lake life and curious what your own stretch of shoreline near those trails is worth, Monica Kaiser is happy to talk it through. No pressure, just a neighbor who's spent 26 years getting to know these roads too. Reach out anytime to request your home valuation.
