Utah GeoTour-Rich-Bear Lake Monster? Letterbox Hybrid

Rich County was believed to have first been visited by European descendent explorers in 1811, when trapper Joseph Miller discovered the Bear River. In 1827, the first annual rendezvous of trappers occurred on the south shore of Bear Lake, a tradition which is still marked today. The site is also preserved as part of Bear Lake State Park. The first settlement within the county's present boundary was Round Valley in 1863; located southwest of Laketown (settled 1864), it is now a ghost town. Randolph was settled in 1870. Originally created as Richland County in 1864, the name was shortened to Rich in 1868 by the 17th Utah Territorial Legislature.

Bear Lake was formed 28,000 years ago by earthquake activity. At an elevation of 5,923 feet, Bear Lake is 20 miles long and eight miles wide, 208 feet deep, and covers 112 square miles.

Originally Bear Lake was called Black Bear Lake by Donald Mackenzie, explorer for the North West Fur Company who discovered it in 1819 while scouting for fur-bearing animals. The name was later changed to Bear Lake.

WHY IS IT SO BLUE? Its beautiful and unique green-blue color is the result of calcium carbonates suspended in the lake.

Source: Utah State Parks. (n.d.). Retrieved August 16, 2016, from http://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/bear-lake/discover/

The Legend of the Bear Lake Monster

An 1868 article in the Deseret News announced that, “The Indians have a tradition concerning a strange, serpent-like creature inhabiting the waters of Bear Lake…. Now, it seems this water devil, as the Indians called it, has again made an appearance. A number of our white settlers declare they have seen it with their own eyes. This Bear Lake Monster, they now call it, is causing a great deal of excitement up here” and then the author—Joseph C. Rich—went on to relate several sightings of the creature in recent times. The article created a stir in Salt Lake City and within a month “a news staff member… quizzed many Bear Lake people and found hardly a person who doubted it.”

LDS Church leaders took an interest in the monster and when they visited the area on preaching tours, took the opportunity to speak firsthand with the residents of the region. They stated that they “had conversation with brother Charles C. Rich and other brethren from Bear Lake Valley, respecting the monster which have been seen in the lake” and found that they declared that the testimony that had been given “by so many individuals, who have seen these creatures in so many places and under a variety of circumstances” that they (the locals) considered the story to be “indisputable.” The Deseret News continued to publish articles about the Monster—skeptically at times and defensively at others—while other local newspapers turned to attack the stories of a water devil. The Salt Lake Tribune even went as far as to quip that the Monster was “twin brother to the devil and cousin to Brigham [Young].”

Articles about the Bear Lake Monster continued to appear over the next several years, either reciting new sightings of the Bear Lake Monster as well as similar creatures in other rivers and lakes in the Utah Territory or calling the sightings into question. The number of alleged appearances of lake monsters all across northern Utah caused some people to speculate that there was an underground channel connecting the Great Salt Lake and other waterways to Bear Lake. Interest was high enough that at one point even LDS Church president Brigham Young decided to investigated the claims to find out whether the story was “an honest tale of a serpent, or only a fish story” and went as far as sending a large rope to Paris, Idaho to aid in capturing the monster.

Young wasn’t the only person interested in capturing the creature. One local resident proposed using a large baited hook attached to a twenty-foot cable and three hundred yards of one-inch rope, at the end of which was a to be a large buoy with a flagstaff inserted and an anchor to keep it in a perpendicular position. From the buoy one hundred yards of three-quarter-inch rope was to be extended to a tree on shore. When captured, it was hoped that the monster could exploited for its wondrous proportions in the show business, in competition with the famous P. T. Barnum.

Interest eventually died down in the subject and the phenomenon faded from public memory. Twenty-six years following his articles and allegations, Joseph C. Rich finally admitted that it had all been a “wonderful first class lie.”

Sighting of the Bear Lake Monster continued even after Rich admitted that he fabricated the original sightings as a hoax. A 1907 letter published in a Logan, Utah newspaper claimed that two men had seen the Bear Lake behemoth attack their camp and kill one of their horses, a four-year-old claimed to see it in 1937, and a Boy Scout leader spoke of seeing it in 1946. The last reported sighting of the monster was in June 2002, when Bear Lake business owner Brian Hirschi claims to have seen the monster.

The monster has become a part of local folklore, partly due to sporadic sightings and partly in jest. For years a Bear Lake Monster Boat—a tourist boat shaped to look like a green lake monster—offered a 45-minute scenic cruise of Bear Lake with folklore storytelling. Another self-parody that the locals have done is to fill a float in the Garden City, Utah Raspberry Days parade with local children and label it “The Real Bear Lake Monsters.” On another occasion, during the 1996 Raspberry Days, a competition was organized in Garden City to have local school children name the leviathan. The judges decided on the name Isabella, which had been submitted by an eight-year-old girl.

The Bear Lake monster also appears in Animal Planet's "Lost Tapes", drama series, in which it is depicted as similar to a crocodile or a mosasaur. Lost Tapes also states that in one legend Pecos Bill fought the monster for days until he finally defeated the creature. The show also included a group of girls who were staying over in tents beside the lake being attacked. Most recently the search for this creature was the subject of SyFy Channel's Haunted Highway Season 1, Episode 1 (2012) "Bear Lake Beast; Verges Hairy Man." During which investigators found a cow bone in a submerged cave, leading to the question: How did it get there?

Source: Bear Lake monster. (n.d.). Retrieved August 16, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Lake_monster

Please Note

• All applicable state park fees and rules apply.
• A State Park fee is required to access this cache.
• This cache is available only during park operating hours (listed above).
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