FIELD FILE · UTAH-LAKE-MONSTERLAKE & SEA MONSTERLOCAL LEGEND

Utah Lake Monster

Also known as Utah Lake serpent

Utah Lake, Utah County, UtahFIRST REPORTED: 1868LAKE & SEA MONSTERS

A serpent with a stovepipe neck and alligator jaws that pioneer newspapers reported in Utah Lake from about 1868 to 1880 – and that critics called humbug.

Utah Lake, the large, shallow freshwater lake beside Provo, had its own monster during Utah Territory’s great lake-monster craze of the late 1860s and 1870s. The craze began in August 1868, when Deseret News correspondent Joseph C. Rich published a lively letter about a monster in Bear Lake; soon settlers were reporting creatures in the Great Salt Lake, Sevier Lake, Fish Lake and Utah Lake as well. Rich later admitted that his Bear Lake story had been “a first class lie” – but by then the idea had taken on a life of its own.

Utah Lake’s monster had its big moment in the early 1870s. In September 1870, commercial fishermen from Springville found part of a large skull on the lakeshore, with tooth sockets as big as an ox’s and a five-inch tusk, and some people declared it the monster’s remains. The following spring, Goshen’s bishop, William Price, and two companions reported seeing a snake-like animal about a mile offshore that stood several feet out of the water “like a section of a large stove pipe” and was, he estimated, about 60 feet long. A rival paper, the Daily Corinne Reporter, mocked the story as a fabrication.

The most dramatic report came in June 1880, when two Provo boys, Willie Roberts and George Scott, said that while swimming in the lake they heard a lion-like roar and were chased to shore by an animal with four long legs, a head two or three feet long and an alligator-like mouth. The Salt Lake Tribune blamed the local whiskey. Two weeks later a veteran Utah Lake fisherman wrote to the Deseret News that in 25 years on the lake he had seen plenty of “monsters” that always turned out to be rushes, moss, pelicans or floating logs.

By the 1880s most Utahns regarded the lake monsters as, in the words of the time, a species of “humbug,” and after a brief revival in 1921 the Utah Lake Monster faded into local history. Springville historian D. Robert Carter, who studied the newspaper record, suggested that settlers’ stories may have been shaped in part by Ute and other Great Basin traditions of water beings, sometimes called water babies – living traditions that are distinct from the settlers’ monster tales.

Type: Lake & sea monster
Status: Local legend
First reported: 1868
Best-known location: Utah Lake, Utah County, Utah
Also called: Utah Lake serpent
Reported in: Utah

What witnesses describe

Reports varied: a 60-foot serpent with a neck rising from the water like a stovepipe, or a four-legged animal with a long head, an alligator-like mouth and a roar like a lion. Some described a head shaped like a greyhound’s.

Where and when it’s seen

Utah Lake, a large, shallow, reedy freshwater lake in Utah Valley between Provo, Lehi, Springville and Goshen; reports came mainly in spring and summer.

Notable sightings

September 1870A tusked skull on the shore Near Springville, Utah Lake
The Dallin family, commercial fishermen, found part of a large skull with a five-inch tusk. Deseret News correspondent Charles D. Evans displayed it as a possible relic of the monster.
Spring 1871Bishop Price’s stovepipe serpent West side of Utah Lake
Goshen bishop William Price and two companions saw a snake-like creature about a mile offshore, which he judged to be about 60 feet long. The Deseret News printed his account with cautious support.
June 1880Two boys chased from the water Utah Lake near Provo
Willie Roberts and George Scott said a roaring, four-legged animal with alligator-like jaws pursued them to shore. Salt Lake papers ridiculed the story.
1921A last revival Utah Lake
The American Fork Citizen reported a strange seal-like animal; a reader wrote in to identify it as a black otter, and the monster faded from the news.

What could explain it?

Veteran fisherman David LeBaron wrote in 1880 that rushes, clumps of moss, pelicans, floating logs and ordinary animals, magnified on the water, account for monster sightings – an explanation that still holds.
Otters, beavers, large carp and swimming deer or cattle may explain some reports, as with the 1921 sighting identified as an otter.
The Utah Lake stories followed directly in the wake of Joseph C. Rich’s Bear Lake monster letter, which its author later admitted was a hoax; rival newspapers openly mocked one another’s monsters.
The 1870 skull was never scientifically identified and may have come from an ordinary large animal or a fossil.

Legend, culture and tourism

The Utah Lake Monster is part of Utah’s pioneer-era lake-monster lore, alongside the better-known Bear Lake Monster. The Utah Lake Commission has shared the story in its educational materials, and local historians and newspapers revisit it as a colorful window on frontier journalism.