There’s an old tale whispered around the campfires of Utah, a story that’s been passed down through generations, claiming that the state’s sprawling Great Lakes are home to not just one or two, but five monstrous creatures lurking beneath the waves. Long before the wagon wheels of settlers creaked across the plains, the Native Americans who knew these lands spoke of “Water Babies”—eerie little beings said to haunt certain lakes, their voices like a siren’s call luring unwary travellers to a watery grave. By the time pioneers started putting down roots, the local tribes had bigger tales to tell: a massive water lizard, stretching thirty feet from nose to tail, with floppy ears and a gaping maw that could gulp a man down whole. By the 1820s, the natives swore that these great serpents had disappeared, but in the 1860s, the newcomers began to create their own stories about giant, scaly terrors emerging from the deep.
Most of these spooky encounters seem tied to Utah Lake and Bear Lake up in the north. Folks who’ve seen these beasts—and there’ve been plenty—reckon each lake’s got its own dragon, maybe even a pair of twins, judging by the way witnesses describe them. One of the earliest stories came from a fellow named Henry Walker back in 1864. He was out on Utah Lake, minding his own business, when something broke the surface—a creature he swore looked like a snake but with a greyhound’s head staring right at him. He was so frightened that he quickly fled the scene, and he wasn’t alone. Over the years, all sorts of respectable types, even priests, claimed they’d locked eyes with these things. They all said the same: a snake-like body, stubby legs poking out like tree trunks, a huge mouth, and those awful black eyes that’d haunt your dreams.
In the late 1860s, a group of local boys decided to take action. Whenever the monsters surfaced, they would grab their rifles and fire potshots. A few claimed they landed hits, but nobody ever managed to bring one down or drag it ashore. One poor farmer thought he’d caught a break when he heard something rummaging in his garden at night. He grabbed his trusty rifle, fired into the dark, and ended up staring at his neighbour’s dead cow—oops. However, in 1870, fishermen from nearby Springsville discovered a strange, large skull with a five-inch tusk protruding from its jaw. A year later, the Salt Lake Herald reported that they had finally captured the monster, but it’s unclear what happened to its body—it simply vanished.
Then there’s the tale from 1871, when two fishermen were out on Bear Lake. They said the monster popped up right in front of them, and they blasted it with their rifles. The monster, seemingly indifferent to the bullets, swam away. A few years later, in 1874, a wagon train captain named William Bridge added his perspective. He was near Bear Lake when he spotted the thing, about twenty yards from shore. He said its face was flat with big eyes and standout ears, covered in short, snuff-colored fur, and its neck stretched four or five feet out of the water. That story stuck with the locals so much that they got serious about catching it. Two big names around town, Brigham Young and Phineas Cook, cooked up a scheme: a giant fishing line, 300 feet of thick rope, a massive hook, and a chunk of mutton for bait. They tossed it in, marked it with a buoy, and waited. The meat continued to disappear, but the monster remained elusive. The monster didn’t take the bait.
Sightings started drying up as the century wound down. There was a little buzz in 1921 when someone claimed they saw the Utah Lake creature again, but things went quiet after that. One solid report came in 1946, though—a scoutmaster swore he watched the bizarre thing surface, and he told it so straight and detailed that folks said only a fool would doubt him. Plus, as the local jokers like to point out, Scouts don’t lie, right? Still, not everyone’s sold. A historian named D. Robert Carter gave a talk to the Utah State Historical Society once, and he had a wild take: he reckoned the monster might just be some oversized bug. Whether you buy that or not, the legend of Utah’s lake monsters lives on, a creepy little piece of history that keeps folks glancing at the water, wondering what’s really down there.