{"id":345345,"date":"2025-10-31T10:34:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T10:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/345345\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T10:34:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T10:34:22","slug":"tom-slick-was-san-antonios-eccentric-millionaire-yeti-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/345345\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Slick was San Antonio’s eccentric millionaire Yeti hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Southwest Research Institute visitors might be surprised to find a 7-foot-tall metal statue of the abominable snowman.<\/p>\n

The research institute\u2019s mythical mascot can be found everywhere. Staff dress the metal yeti up for holidays and move him around different parts of the 1,500-acre research campus. They show him off on social media and hand out Yeti-themed stickers to library visitors. Yeti statues and knick-knacks adorn SwRI CEO and President Adam Hamilton\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The unlikely and unofficial mascot is an homage to SwRI\u2019s founder \u2014 Tom Slick, the most eccentric Texas millionaire you\u2019ve probably never heard of \u2014 who spent years searching for the yeti and other creatures in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to summarize Slick\u2019s time on Earth and the impact he left on San Antonio. Oilman, rancher, scientist, philanthropist, inventor, adventurer, cryptozoologist. He hunted mythical monsters, founded three research institutes with a vision of turning San Antonio into \u201cScience City,\u201d grew his father\u2019s oil business, maintained an extensive art collection and authored books on achieving world peace.<\/p>\n

The only thing he couldn\u2019t seem to do was sit still for too long.<\/p>\n

And he did all of this by his mid-40s. In 1962, while returning to the U.S. from a Canadian excursion, the 46-year-old Slick died in a plane crash.<\/p>\n

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Slick\u2019s niece, Catherine Nixon Cooke, was 11 when he died. She has since authored a book about her uncle, \u201cTom Slick, Mystery Hunter,\u201d and led the Slick-founded Mind Science Foundation for 15 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThose of us who spent time with him realized that he was a real life \u2018Indiana Jones\u2019 long before that archetype had a name,\u201d Cooke said. \u201cMost of us who heard his fabulous tales as children became curious and adventurous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nessie and \u2018Sweet William\u2019<\/p>\n

Thomas Baker Slick Jr. was born in 1916 in the small town of Clarion, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

His father, Slick Sr., would become one of the most accomplished independent oil operators in the Southwest. Better known as \u201cLucky Tom\u201d and \u201cKing of the Wildcatters,\u201d Slick Sr. built a fortune drilling wildcat wells<\/a>, a high-risk method of discovering oil fields that is essentially sticking a drill in the ground and crossing your fingers.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tom Slick with the cast of his legendary yeti footprint. Credit: Courtesy \/ Catherine Nixon Cooke<\/p>\n

The Slicks were constantly on the move, between their Pennsylvania hometown, Oklahoma and San Antonio. In 1930, coincidentally at the same age his son would die, Slick Sr. passed away from a brain bleed. He left his children $15 million, the equivalent of what would be $290 million in 2025 dollars.<\/p>\n

From an early age, Slick was interested in science and biology, as well as the genetic engineering of animals. This, combined with the sense of adventurousness and daring his parents instilled in him, set the stage for Slick\u2019s ventures in adulthood.<\/p>\n

According to Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist, author and TV personality, who wrote a book about Slick\u2019s adventures: \u201cTom Slick and the Search for the Yeti\u201d in 1989,\u00a0 Slick embarked on his first hunt for the unknown while in college.<\/p>\n

\"\"Southwest Research Institute has a non-fiction book called \u201cThe Hunt for the Abominable Snowman\u201d in its rare books collection authored by Peter Byrne and Tom Slick. Credit: Amber Esparza \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n

In 1937, as a pre-medicine science and biology student at Yale, Slick urged a group of friends to take a detour during their summer vacation in Europe. The group went to Scotland\u2019s Loch Ness lake in search of the Loch Ness Monster, otherwise known as \u201cNessie.\u201d The group interviewed locals and searched the water\u2019s surface, but didn\u2019t spot anything resembling a long-necked lake creature.<\/p>\n

Visitors to San Antonio\u2019s Tom Slick Park can spot a metal Nessie statue<\/a> partially submerged in the park\u2019s pond.<\/p>\n

Also while at Yale, Slick became infatuated with a \u201cRipley\u2019s Believe It or Not!\u201d newspaper column concerning a strange-looking barn animal that its owner claimed was a \u201choat,\u201d a hybrid animal that resulted from the mating of a hog and a goat. This \u201choat\u201d was put on display by its owner in Oklahoma and then featured in Ripley\u2019s column.<\/p>\n

Slick, hellbent on breeding the animal, tracked down the owner within a month and bought it for $100, bringing it back to his mother\u2019s farm in Oklahoma. According to Slick\u2019s sister, Betty Slick Moorman, he kept a photo of the animal (which he called \u201cSweet William\u201d) in his wallet, showing it to girls he went on dates with.<\/p>\n

Perhaps looking for an extra wingman, Slick tried to breed the \u201choat\u201d with other hogs and goats, but failed. That\u2019s because whatever odd-looking barn animal Slick brought back to San Antonio was almost certainly not a hog-goat, animals that are too genetically different to produce offspring.<\/p>\n

Less strangely, years later, Slick helped cross-breed American Angus and Brahman cattle, which resulted in the Brangus, today a common choice for beef farmers in hotter climates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Slick\u2019s monster hunting efforts would then take a hiatus, starting with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.<\/p>\n

Oil drilling, diamond mining and Science City<\/p>\n

For Slick, the years to follow were productive, to say the least.<\/p>\n

He established his first research institute at the age of 25 in 1941, called the Foundation of Applied Research, which would become the Southwest Foundation for Research and Education. Today it\u2019s known as Texas Biomedical Research Institute.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Tom Slick was just 25 years old when he established what is today Texas Biomedical Research Institute. It will celebrate its 85th anniversary in 2026. Credit: Courtesy \/ Catherine Nixon Cooke<\/p>\n

During WWII, Slick served as a \u201cdollar-a-year-man,\u201d working with the U.S. government without direct compensation to mobilize and manage industry resources for the war effort, and later serving in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

After the war, Slick helped his brother Earl run the cargo airliner he founded, Slick Airways. He also continued growing his father\u2019s oil operations, helping discover one of the most significant post-WWII oilfield finds in the U.S., the Benedum Field<\/a> in West Texas in 1947. The same year, he set up a second research institute on his sprawling ranch: Southwest Research Institute.<\/p>\n

Slick also owned a mining company that bought abandoned mines and attempted to squeeze any remaining profits from them with new technology. During a 1956 diamond-hunting expedition in South America, Slick\u2019s plane was forced to land in the remote jungles of British Guiana, now Guyana. He reportedly spent two weeks living with the Waiwai tribe \u2014 a small Indigenous group in Northern Brazil \u2014 surviving on parrot meat, before returning home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1948, Slick co-invented a new construction method to build multi-story buildings, known as lift-slab construction<\/a> or the Youtz-Slick Method.<\/p>\n

Slick cultivated an extensive art collection during his world travels, now dispersed among family members, the McNay Art Museum, the Witte Museum and others. Slick authored two books, in 1951 and 1958, on his vision for ending global conflict and bringing about world peace.<\/p>\n

This is really only the tip of the iceberg on Slick. He had his hands in a number of other pursuits, like early research on birth control, IVF and alternative medicine, just to name a few.<\/p>\n

The yeti expedition<\/p>\n

Cryptozoology, a subculture that seeks undiscovered and mythical animals, emerged in the 1950s. In fact, Coleman describes Slick as one of the first cryptozoologists \u2014 those who search for hidden animals not yet acknowledged by science, as he puts it.<\/p>\n

Slick\u2019s search for the yeti was more scientific than it would be considered today. Much of the Himalayas hadn\u2019t been explored, so the idea that an undiscovered ape resided in the mountains wasn\u2019t as far-fetched to scientists at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a little bias,\u201d Hamilton, the SwRI president, said. \u201cBut a lot of people would call it a monster-hunting adventure. I don\u2019t know so much about that. To me, it\u2019s almost like a fact-finding expedition.\u201d<\/p>\n

In India, Slick heard reports from locals of an ape-like creature that roamed the Himalayan Mountains. Slick suspected that this creature, which he described as \u201ca fierce and hairy ape-man, at least eight feet tall,\u201d could be an evolutionary \u201cmissing link\u201d to help explain the jump between earlier primates and Homo sapiens.<\/p>\n

According to Coleman\u2019s account, Slick went on several reconnaissance missions gathering information, and in 1957, he returned to Nepal with a small crew, guns, crossbows and ammunition, ready to prove the existence of the yeti by bringing back a specimen \u201calive or dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slick\u2019s Texan approach earned him a \u201cgood deal of bad press\u201d abroad, Coleman wrote. Slick would return to Texas without a yeti, but with a footprint, hair and droppings that he believed belonged to one.<\/p>\n

\"\"An undated photo of Tom Slick in a lab. Credit: Courtesy \/ Texas Biomedical Research Institute<\/p>\n

Cooke recalls marveling at a yeti footprint cast that adorned Slick\u2019s dining room table and the stories he\u2019d tell about the expedition.<\/p>\n

It was the last yeti expedition Slick participated in, though he would help organize others. That\u2019s because Slick and his crew also had a near-death experience when the bus they were sleeping on rolled down a hill. Everyone got out okay, but Slick injured his knee. Seeking to \u201ckeep his mother\u2019s blood pressure in the normal range,\u201d as Coleman put it, Slick continued organizing searches but didn\u2019t personally participate.<\/p>\n

Slick wasn\u2019t done monster hunting though. His attention turned to the yeti\u2019s long-long, forest-residing cousin, Sasquatch. Slick participated in expeditions in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, where Bigfoot sightings had been reported. Slick apparently collected samples during these trips as well, that he said were from the abominable woodsman, but his involvement in the searches ended in 1962, and it\u2019s unclear where the samples ended up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Slick sought other mystery animals \u2014 though these searches seem less involved than that of the yeti \u2014 including the \u201corang pendek,\u201d a hobbit-like creature in Indonesian folklore rumored (but never recorded) to inhabit the Island of Sumatra, giant salamanders in California and an Alaskan lake monster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Slick\u2019s Legacy<\/p>\n

Outside of the research institutes, where yeti statues, portraits and busts of Slick can be found everywhere, Slick is not too well known. Besides the books by his niece and Coleman, an eight-episode dramatized podcast series featuring actor Owen Wilson as Slick was released last year, chronicling his monster-hunting adventures.<\/p>\n

Although Slick didn\u2019t bring back a yeti from the East, he did return to San Antonio with an interest in the human mind. According to Cooke, Slick spent time with Buddhist monks and the Dalai Lama in Tibet. Having observed what he described as \u201cpsychokinetic activity,\u201d holy men he said could move things with their mind, Slick established the Mind Science Foundation in 1958.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Slick even considered the foundation \u2014 which supports neuroscientific research through grants \u2014 as his most important undertaking, given the \u201ctremendous potential\u201d of the human mind.<\/p>\n

Although the Mind Science Foundation has not cracked telekinesis yet, and neither research institute has found the yeti or Sasquatch (or so we\u2019re told), the institutes and foundation have made significant scientific impacts in San Antonio and internationally.<\/p>\n

\"\"Explorers Club Flag Expedition \u201cIn the Footsteps of Tom Slick\u201d in 2001. Credit: Courtesy \/ Catherine Nixon Cooke<\/p>\n

To SwRI CEO and President Adam Hamilton, the Yeti represents a sense of lightness and curiosity that Slick brought to science \u2014 what he describes as boundless childlike curiosity, open mindedness and a willingness to fail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[Slick] was curious,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cAnd curiosity is a critical element of scientific and technical advancement. If we weren\u2019t curious about things, we wouldn\u2019t be motivated to do a lot of the kind of work that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, he added, the yeti brings a sense of playfulness to campus. \u201cWe do hard technical work all day,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cYou do have to have some distractions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from his work, Slick married twice and left behind four children.<\/p>\n

His niece followed his footsteps by joining the Explorer\u2019s Club \u2014 a professional society with the goal of promoting scientific exploration and field study. In 2001, Cooke completed an expedition to the Himalayan Mountains carrying the organization\u2019s flag in the footsteps of her uncle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe managed to achieve more than most do in a full lifetime,\u201d Cooke said of Slick. \u201cBut I think of him as a brilliant star that zoomed across our universe too briefly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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