The Prospector's Skiff: First Report of the Wallowa Lake Monster

Wallowa Lake lies about a mile south of Joseph, in northeastern Oregon. A long glacial lake, running north to south, with mountains at its southern end. In 1885 it lay in Union County. The local paper said it had been "sounded to the depth of 270 feet".

The lake already had a story. An Indian legend held that it was home to "a big sea cow," which came up one evening and swallowed a young warrior and his bride as they glided across the water in a canoe. Local Indigenous people were said to avoid the lake because of it.

A Friday evening in the autumn of 1885. Shortly after dusk. A prospector was alone in a skiff, rowing down from the south end of the lake toward Joseph.

About midway, fifty yards to his right, an animal reared its head and neck out of the water. Ten or twelve feet high. It saw him. It immediately dived.

Then it rose again, about the same distance away. This time on his left. It gave "a low bellow something like that of a cow" and brought its body to the surface. One hundred feet in length, the prospector said. "It seemed to have a large, flat head, something like that of a hippopotamus, and its neck, which was about ten feet in length, was as large around as a man's body."

The Wallowa Chieftain printed the story on Thursday, 5 November 1885. The weekly was about eighteen months old and dated the sighting to "last Friday evening", most likely 30 October. The witness "refuses to give his name to the public." Nobody else saw the animal. There were no photographs, no tracks and no official inquiry. It is the earliest newspaper report of the creature now called Wally.

The first theory came from the valley. In the 1902 Histories of Union and Wallowa Counties, Uncle Gene Johnson suggested a sturgeon that had come "underground" from the Snake River and grown huge in the lake. The underground river is folklore. White sturgeon did run up the Snake, and they can reach about 20 feet. Far short of one hundred. But a big fish rolling at dusk is easy to overestimate.

Others point to the light. Fifty yards in fading dusk. A wave, a floating log or a swimming deer or elk can all suggest a head and neck. Frontier papers also printed tall tales, and this one sat beside an old legend. Still, no one has specifically called the report a hoax.

Wally kept coming back. In 1932 the Reeseys reported a great fish longer than their boat. Irene Wiggins, owner of Wallowa Lake Lodge, saw a "Big, black thing, like a hog's head." In 1982 Kirk Marks and Marjorie Crammer described something dark and serpentine, about 50 feet long, raising large waves. Seattle Magazine calls Wally "a distant cousin of Ogopogo."

The 1885 page itself has never been digitized. Its words survive through a transcription in the Reavis collection. Later retellings made the animal thrash its head, glide several hundred yards and shrink to 80 feet. The original stays stranger. A hippo-headed giant with a ten-foot neck, bellowing like a cow on a lake at dusk.