Colorado folklore and urban legends: From Tommyknockers to Bigfoot

On quiet nights in Colorado’s old mining camps, workers would sometimes hear knocking sounds echoing from deep within the Rocky Mountains.

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Miners who spent their lives underground often explained the noises the only way they could: as the work of the Tommyknockers. These figures were described as small, 2-foot-tall green gnomes, sometimes with white whiskers or beards, said to live within the tunnels themselves.

In some accounts, they were believed to be the ghosts of former miners, returning underground to warn crews of cave-ins or other disasters. At other times, they were thought to be guides, leading miners toward gold. In less generous tales, they were mischievous, stealing tools and extinguishing lanterns.

The Tommyknockers are part of Colorado’s myth and lore that lives on and has expanded, from mountain legends and Bigfoot sightings to stories surrounding Denver International Airport. As Colorado celebrates its 150th anniversary, those stories continue to shape how its history, culture and geography are understood.

“A lot of the folklore that we have in Colorado are kind of regional variants of stories that we see take place in other places across the country and across the globe, but within Colorado, they’ll sort of have a way of finding this sort of regional contextual importance for us,” said Jack Daly, a folklorist and lecturer in the University of Colorado Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

The legends and myths travelers carried into Colorado

Some of the state’s most enduring legends emerged from mining and mountain communities, shaped in part by the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, which drew unprecedented numbers of people into the region in the late 1850s.

Among the stories migrants carried with them were tales of the Tommyknockers, a myth rooted in Irish, Cornish and Welsh mining traditions in the British Isles.

Sam Bock, History Colorado’s Director of Interpretation and Publications, said the myth took root in Colorado as miners carried it west, where it became embedded in the state’s mining culture, which is still a significant part of its economic and historical identity.

The myth was said to originate as a way for miners to make sense of the strange echoes and unexplained sounds deep within the mines, as well as to cope with the constant dangers of their work.

Bock said many of these myths and legends may begin with a kernel of truth, later shaped and expanded by cultural beliefs, traditions and specific historical moments.

“There’s no such thing as a legend that comes out of nowhere. There’s no such thing as a myth that doesn’t have some connection to a point of truth, even if that point was really long ago,” he said.

“Colorado is one of those places where people have been coming from all over the world for hundreds of years. Every single culture has its own myths and they don’t stay in one place, they go with the people, because the people find value in those myths.”

As a folklorist, Daly said myths are “sacred narratives” explaining how the world came to be. Legends, on the other hand, are stories rooted in specific places and periods in history, often with some kind of believable or supernatural element to them.

As those stories traveled, they often became tied to the landscapes people move through.

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Take elephants up on Boreas Pass as an example. When the P. T. Barnum circus came to Breckenridge, it was said the circus train was too heavy to make it up to the pass. According to the legend, elephants were unloaded to help push it to the summit. While no elephants roam the mountains today, hikers can still find Elephant Head wildflowers in the area.

But not every Colorado legend arrived from somewhere else. Some were invented in the mountains themselves, including one of the state’s strangest creatures: the Slide-Rock Bolter.

Described in William T. Cox’s 1910 novel “Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts,” the whale-like creature inhabits only the steepest mountain slopes. With tiny eyes, a wide sculpin-like mouth, and a tail with enormous grab-hooks, it clings to mountain ridges, waiting for unsuspecting tourists below.

Once it spotted its prey, the Bolter would release its grip and slide downhill, swallowing the victim whole before dragging itself back up the mountainside. The bolter was said to devastate forests as well, uprooting trees in its path.

Bock said History Colorado’s research center traced the story back to the U.S. Forest Service woodcutting camps and miners in the Colorado mountains.

“If you look at the time in which this myth was kind of beginning to reach audiences, it’s right when Colorado is transitioning from an extractive economy, primarily based in mining and agriculture and in wood cutting, to an economy based in outdoor recreation and travel,” he said.

“The first one to record the story that we’ve been able to find was a Forest Service historian, storyteller who went around the Forest Service camps in Colorado, and recorded these stories, and it seems like he was recording them as kind of a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ story.”

Bock said the foresters and loggers used to swap stories about setting decoy traps for the Bolter, using dummy tourists dressed in plaid and stuffed with explosives.

“So these guys kind of saw an end of an economic era in Colorado. And that’s how that legend came about, and it was propagated kind of as a joke,” he said.

Colorado’s vast wilderness has also helped make the state a longtime hotspot for Bigfoot lore. While the modern Bigfoot craze gained popularity in California during the mid-20th century from a construction worker creating a practical joke, recent sightings, a dedicated souvenir shop and museum in Bailey, and even annual festivals in Estes Park have helped keep the legend alive locally.

Bock said stories of large, hairy ape-like creatures, like Gigantopithecus, have appeared across cultures for centuries, often sharing similar traits despite originating in different regions.

“I personally want for there to be a Bigfoot. I would be thrilled if tomorrow someone was like, ‘Look, here is irrefutable proof. I have him,’” Bock said. “But until we see that, I have to put it in the realm of myth and legend.”

For Bock, the persistence of Bigfoot stories also reflects something deeper about modern culture.

“I think one of the reasons that legend is so enduring across so many different places in this country is that it connects to a lot of anxieties that Euro Americans have had around what our industrial culture has done to the natural world and to the native people that still call this place home,” he said.

Detailed in his book “Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural,” Daly said he has taken part in a four-day Bigfoot expedition in southern Colorado with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, as well as a night hike with the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey.

He said he approaches his research without positioning himself as either a skeptic or a believer, arguing that these stories shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

“It’s a difficult thing when you’re dealing with the supernatural as an academic researcher, but it’s important in this day and age to think critically about the world,” he said.

“I try to put my own cultural assumptions and biases and beliefs to the side and say, ‘I don’t know everything about how the world operates,’” he said.

The making of modern stories

In contrast to these mountain legends, Denver sought to shape a different image in the 1870s, promoting itself as a city with “300 days of sunshine” to enhance Colorado’s reputation and attract railroad travelers.

While that claim was more promotional, the city remains one of the sunniest in the United States, averaging about 245 sunny days per year compared to the national average of roughly 205.

Today, when people talk about myths and legends in Colorado, their first thought always goes to Denver International Airport. Over the years, it has become a focal point for conspiracy theories and urban legends, ranging from secret societies and underground bunkers to aliens, lizard people, and eerie interpretations of its public artwork.

One of the most recognizable symbols tied to these stories is a large horse sculpture near Peña Boulevard. Officially titled “Mustang,” it was created by artist Luis Jiménez and commissioned in the mid-1990s. The sculpture stands 32 feet tall and is known for its vivid blue color and glowing red eyes, which led many to nickname it “Blucifer.”

The story of the sculpture’s creation is also part of why it draws attention.

During the final stages of its construction, Jiménez was tragically killed in a studio accident in 2006 when a piece of the sculpture fell and severed an artery in his leg.

His family later completed the work, and it was installed at the airport in 2008. Since then, Blucifer has been a target for mythmakers, with many insisting that he’s cursed, despite its artistic intent.

Beyond the sculpture, online narratives have expanded into claims of extensive underground tunnel systems and “lizard people” supposedly operating beneath the airport.

In reality, the airport has acknowledged that there are several subterranean levels beneath the main terminal, including the trains that carry passengers to and from different concourses and infrastructure from a previously used automated baggage system. Officials also said the tunnels only extend out to the perimeter of the airport, less than two miles.

In addition, officials have said that these areas are limited to operational needs and do not extend into the elaborate networks often described in several conspiracy theories.

However, part of what makes these stories persist is the airport’s scale and design. Large, complex infrastructure projects often create informational gaps.

Daly said these are precisely the environments where modern legends or theories tend to emerge, as people don’t necessarily know what occurs behind the scenes.

As a result, Daly said, when the details are examined closely, most of the legends surrounding the airport trace back to interpretation and internet amplification.

In recent years, the airport itself has even acknowledged its curious reputation, hosting exhibits and campaigns that explore and gently push back on these theories and legends. Rather than confirming certain narratives, these efforts tend to highlight how stories grow around large, complex public spaces.

As Daly puts it, the internet has become “the new Dark Forest” for folklore, an ecosystem where stories spread faster than ever, but where algorithms, hoaxes and increasingly realistic AI fakes make critical media literacy essential.

However, that same ecosystem doesn’t just preserve old myths, it reshapes them. Legends evolve, rename themselves, and adapt to contemporary culture in ways that make them feel newly discovered.

Lately, Daly has been researching reports of a “Dogman,” often described as a wolf-like creature, which he argues is essentially a modern rebranding of the traditional werewolf myth.

In this sense, even newer legends remain connected to older storytelling patterns. Daly said the stories that we have are likely going to continue to shift in ways that mirror and reflect culture, as well as changes in industry and economics.

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