The Lake Pepin "marine monster": where the Pepie legend began (1871)

Lake Pepin is the widest stretch of the Mississippi River. It runs about 22 miles between Minnesota and Wisconsin, up to 2 miles wide. Average depth, 21 feet. At its deepest, about 60.

Long before any newspaper, the lake had a reputation. The Dakota are said to have avoided birchbark canoes here. They used thicker dugouts, because large creatures "had easily punctured the thinner birch canoes."

April 1871. Two local men were on a journey across the lake. One modern account places it on the evening of 24 April. What they saw was big. And it was fast.

On Wednesday 26 April, the Wabasha County Sentinel in Lake City printed their report. Modern articles quote it in differing words. One version reads: "a marine monster, between the size of an elephant and a rhinoceros, which moves through the water with great rapidity." Later sources name the men as Giles Hayde and C. Page Bonney. The Minnesota Historical Society records it under 28 April 1871: "A lake monster was seen swimming on Lake Pepin."

Around 1983, Shelly Schimbeno was water-skiing. Then she saw it. "It was as long as the boat," she said. The boat was 16 feet. "It was black, it was ugly, it was long, serpent-like." She chooses her words with care: "I'm not going to tell you it's Pepie. But I'm not going to tell you it wasn't."

Lake City businessman Larry Neilson once saw a wake "about two hundred feet long." The lake was "smooth as glass." Another time, a log-like object floated upstream, against the current. It disappeared before he could photograph it. In the 2000s, a cabana owner saw a 30-foot creature and stopped letting tourists swim in the middle of the lake.

In 2008 Neilson offered a $50,000 reward. Undeniable photos showing a landmark or the paddle-wheeler Pearl of the Lake would claim it. So would a skin or fin sample confirmed by DNA by a University of Minnesota biologist. Nobody has collected. His inspiration was Loch Ness. "They're just a heckuva lot better at promoting theirs."

On 5 September 2009, filmmaker Heidi Freier led an expedition near Camp Lacupolis with sonar, an underwater camera and a scuba diver. The diver reportedly met something large that "scared him out of the water." Researcher Chad Lewis searched again in 2011 and 2013 with sonar and underwater cameras. Nothing conclusive.

No agency ever investigated the 1871 report. Ron Benjamin, a Minnesota DNR fisheries supervisor, was blunt: "There really isn't anything outrageously large or scary out there." Sceptics point to lake sturgeon, longnose gar, catfish, floating logs, lateral waves and boat wakes. Lewis adds stray alligator gar or bull sharks, both recorded in the Mississippi as far north as Illinois. Still, he says he is "at least 75 percent sure" there is truth behind the legend.

Lewis and Noah Voss published Pepie: The Lake Monster of the Mississippi River in 2014. The creature featured on Boogeymen: Monsters Among Us and in Stewart Jay Koski's film The Pepie Legend. By 2008, Lake City shops were selling Pepie Chow and Pepiemint ice cream. On 1 April 2023, Goodhue County Sheriff Marty Kelly posted a staged April Fools video of divers seeing "a serpent like creature." Many viewers believed it at first.