Captain James C. Kerr and the steamer U.S. Grant: the first Flathead Lake Monster sighting

1889. The year Montana achieved statehood. Captain James C. Kerr, a former captain on Lake Superior, owned and ran the steamboat U.S. Grant on Flathead Lake. He carried cargo and about 100 passengers between Polson Bay and Selish, the northern port on the Flathead River. Selish had begun in 1880 as Dooley's Landing, a trading post set up by "Honest John" Dooley about two miles above the lake.

Somewhere on the run up the lake, Kerr saw something in the water ahead. He thought it was a large log. Then the boat drew closer. The "log," estimated at more than 20 feet in length, began to move through the water.

It was whale-like. It swam along the surface, right in the steamboat's path. Many of the passengers saw it. Some accounts say everyone aboard did.

Passengers panicked. One of them pulled out a rifle and fired. Accounts differ on how many shots. The creature plunged back underwater, diving for safety.

No one recorded its colour, its eyes or any sound. There were no photographs and no physical traces. Only the story.

The encounter became the founding moment of the Flathead Lake Monster, nicknamed "Flessie" after Nessie. Later witnesses filled in the picture. A modern description speaks of a large, round, eel-shaped creature twenty to forty feet long, with brownish to bluish-black skin and grayish-black eyes. One later retelling even has the creature ramming the boat at high speed. None of the other sources mention ramming.

There was no official inquiry in 1889. The record came later. Paul Fugleberg, editor of the Flathead Courier, put together a file of the earlier sightings and became known as the original Flathead Lake Monster historian. In 1993, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Laney Hanzel began keeping records after a cryptozoologist requested documentation. By July 2018 there were 109 sightings. Hanzel, Hilary Devlin and Missoulian reporter Vince Devlin mapped more than 100 sightings since 1889. The map is hosted by the Flathead Lakers.

The paper trail is thin. No 1889 newspaper has turned up, and Wikipedia says the creature was "supposedly first reported" this way. Every version traces back to Fugleberg's material or to writers who followed him. Even the boat's history varies between sources, including the year the U.S. Grant entered service.

Fugleberg listed what people may really have seen. Hyperactive imaginations. Playful pranks. Wave action, shadows, lighting effects. Logs, and animals from bears to an escaped buffalo. Logs, notably, were Kerr's first thought. The favoured natural candidate is a big sturgeon. In 1955, Polson businessmen offered prizes for the "superfish," and C. Leslie Griffith caught a white sturgeon 7½ feet long weighing 181 lb 1 oz. It is now displayed at the Polson-Flathead Historical Museum.

The lake had its monster stories before Kerr. A Kutenai tale tells of a monster with antlers breaking through the lake ice. In 2024, a 25-foot bronze statue was installed in Polson. And every account still begins in the same place. A captain, a log that moved, and a rifle shot across the water.