Legendary lake monster takes up permanent residence in Polson park as sculpture
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POLSON — A 25-foot bronze sculpture of the Flathead Lake monster serenely gazes toward the Flathead River and the Polson bridge from its new riverfront home in Sacajawea Park. The creature appears to be surfacing as its neck and head, body, side fins and tail are all visible above ground level. The “monster” was commissioned by area resident Pat Binger.
“We’ve lived here all our lives,” she said. “Our children went to school in Polson. I thought it’d be nice to give something back to the town.”
After a couple years pondering possibilities, Binger ultimately settled on a whimsical lake creature that she hopes helps Polson make the most of its many Flathead Lake Monster legends.
“Why not capitalize on a fun story and claim as a tourist attraction for Polson,” she said. Though Binger’s never laid eyes on the Flathead Lake monster herself, she said she has many credible friends who have.
Stories of a mysterious creature seen swimming in the lake date back to at least the 1800s.
The earliest published sighting of Flathead Lake’s “monster” took place in 1889 when passengers aboard the U.S. Grant, a steamboat that ferried passengers and cargo between the north and south shores of the lake, reported witnessing an unidentified object approximately 20-feet in length swimming toward them. A frightened passenger fired a shot at the creature, scaring it off.
More than 100 additional sightings in the years since are typically of a long (20 or more feet) eel-like creature undulating through the water.
In 2018, former Lake County Judge Jim Manley and his wife Julia told television reporters that they had seen the creature three years previous when a dead boat battery had left them marooned on the lake near Big Arm.
Loud splashing sounds on the lake’s calm surface drew their attention. What they saw was a large creature, with several humps moving through the water, then disappearing. Something “huge” and “alive.”
One popular theory about the sightings is that the creature is a white sturgeon – the largest of eight species of sturgeon that live in U.S. rivers, lakes and coastal waters. A prehistoric fish with more than 28 species, sturgeon can live to be more than 100 years old. They are bottom dwelling fish with no teeth that swallow their food (small fish, shellfish and invertebrates) whole.
A real Flathead Lake “monster” was fished out of Flathead Lake on May 28, 1955. The “monster” was a white sturgeon measuring 7.5 feet long, weighing 181 pounds and determined to be 27 years old at the time it was caught.
Karen Dunwell, who heads the Flathead Lake Museum in downtown Polson, remembers the event. Her grandfather, J.F. (Fay) Mcalear, was a downtown businessman at the time and founder of the museum. He’d formed a group called Big Fish Unlimited and offered $100 a foot for any unknown species of fish that was caught out of the lake.
Fisherman Leslie Griffith hooked it using a 2-inch piece of bait on a 3-inch hook. “It drug him around the lake for 5 hours before he beached it near Dayton,” Dunwell said.
Dunwell recalled that her grandfather put the giant fish on the back of a flatbed truck and drove it around the lake and down the Mission Valley charging 25 cents for adults to view the “monster” and 5 cents for children to view it. After the third day, he said “We better cook it.”
Dunwell remembers feasting on the fish at a restaurant called “The Ranch” that was in Polson at the time. After harvesting the meat, the fish was preserved through taxidermy and mounted for display in the Flathead Museum where it remains today.
Historic newspaper clippings that detail the event in the museum note controversy over the catch – with some speculating that the fish was first caught in another body of water – possibly the Snake or Kootenai Rivers - then transplanted and “caught” in Flathead Lake. Others maintain the fish was originally from the lake.
Following Griffith’s catch, Mcalear became more determined than ever to catch the “really big one.” Dunwell said she spent four years fishing with her grandfather and cousin Davis for an even bigger “monster” fish. His methods, she said, were a bit strange. “Grandpa wanted a big one. He used ½ of a chicken, a six-inch long hook, 1400-pound cable as fishing line and chummed with blood,” she said. Dunwell said her grandfather, who never liked the water, called off his quest for good after a storm with 100-mile an hour winds sank their boat off of Cromwell Island. Though everyone ended up being OK, the event was enough to keep Mcalear from venturing back out on the lake.
Though there’ve been some reported sightings - Dunwell said she’s seen sturgeon in the lake 4 times – off the shore of Finley Point and in between Wildhorse and Cromwell Islands - there’s never been another sturgeon caught in Flathead Lake since the one in 1955.
According for the Center for Biological Diversity, lake sturgeon populations are less than 1% of historic levels. The prehistoric fish are a considered a threatened, possibly soon endangered, species. Coupled with the potential to grow to massive size – (the largest white sturgeon ever caught was an 11-feet, 7-inch leviathan that weighed 1,100 pounds and was more than 100 years old) their sparse numbers and rare surfacing behavior have made the sturgeon a top contender for explanation of the mysterious lake sightings.
Polson’s new bronze “monster” in the park is a much friendlier-looking artistic representation of it’s real life sturgeon counterpart but just as harmless. “Why not make it whimsical and kind of fun,” Binger said. “Just because we have a Flathead Lake Monster doesn’t mean it has to be scary.”
She envisions the sculpture as a draw for those curious about legends of the lake’s deep waters and a fun addition for youngsters to climb upon. “I hope everybody enjoys it and it brings out the child in all of us,” she said.
