Bramlett Bateman's White River Monster sightings and the Newport monster hunt

The White River runs south through Jackson County, Arkansas. Stories of something large in its water came before 1937. An unnamed fisherman claimed sightings around 1915 at the same spot. Around 1924, Ethel Smith of Little Rock described a thing "making a loud blowing noise" that "never did show its head or tail." She called it "a terrible-looking thing with dingy gray crusted hide."

July 1, 1937. About 1:00 p.m. Bramlett Bateman owned a plantation on a deep eddy of the White River, about 6 miles downstream from Newport. One account puts the eddy at 60 feet deep.

In his affidavit, the creature "slowly rose to the surface and stayed in this position for some five minutes." It was "about 12 feet long and 4 or 5 feet wide." It was grey, with "the skin of an elephant." One account gives it "the face of a catfish." Arkansas Life says Dee and Sylvia Wyatt, sharecroppers on his land, saw it first.

Bateman saw it several more times over more than two months. Deputy sheriff Z. B. Reid was with him once. He watched "a lot of foam and bubbles coming up in a circle about 30 feet in diameter." To him it "looked like a large sturgeon or cat fish." Four affidavits were sworn, and Time named the "Discoverers Bateman and Wyatt" and described a beast "as big as a box car and as slick as a slimy elephant without legs."

W. E. Penix, a state toll-bridge collector, organised a rope net 40 feet long and 15 feet wide. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says it was never finished for lack of money and materials. Charles B. Brown, a diver from the U.S. Engineer's Office in Memphis, went down three times over two days with an eight-foot harpoon. Visibility was "only three inches." His suit inflated and he bobbed to the surface like a cork.

Hundreds lined the bank, and admission was 25 cents. There were signs, a "Monster Dance," barbecued goat sandwiches and sightseeing flights. Armed citizens patrolled for a week, one carrying a Thompson submachine gun. Brown's verdict was a large fish, maybe a catfish.

The U.S. Bureau of Fisheries suggested an alligator gar. In 1980, Roy P. Mackal proposed a male elephant seal that had strayed up the Mississippi. Joe Nickell, writing in Skeptical Inquirer in 2018, ruled out the seal on range. He argued instead for a Florida manatee, grey and crusted with algae, and noted that one reached Memphis in 2006.

Others have suggested an overturned scow, a big snapping turtle or a stray alligator. Doubts about motive lingered too. In 1940 the Baxter Bulletin reported a hoax explanation involving a shell digger using wires.

Reports of the monster returned in 1971. Witnesses near Towhead Island described a grey creature with a horn on its forehead. They found three-toed tracks 14 inches long. Cloyce Warren took a Polaroid whose original is now lost.

In 1973, Senator Robert Harvey of Swifton sponsored Senate Resolution 23, creating the White River Monster Refuge. It made it unlawful to "molest, kill, trample, or harm the White River Monster while he is in the retreat." Newport still parades its monster. Locals call it Whitey.