Sheriff Nathan H. Mooney's Lake Champlain Water Serpent (Champ), 1883

Lake Champlain's monster has a name. Champ. Long before the 1880s, people on its shores were telling stories. In 1819 the Plattsburgh Republican reported that a Captain Crum, at Bulwagga Bay, had seen a black creature about 187 ft long, with a head like a sea horse raised 15 ft. Even Champlain's own 1609 "monster" belongs to the lore, though it is now read as a garfish.

Some versions say July 1883. No day is recorded. Nathan H. Mooney, described as the Clinton County Sheriff, was on the New York shore of Lake Champlain. One account says he looked off to the northwest part of the lake.

Then he saw it. A gigantic water serpent. By his estimate it was about 25 to 30 ft in length. It rose about five feet out of the water. It was close. About 20 rods off in one telling, roughly 110 yards. About 50 yards away in another. Close enough that he could see round white spots inside its mouth.

He was alone. No other witness is named. No colour, no eyes, no sound. Nothing about how long it stayed or how it left.

Mooney was a respected man, and his sighting, in one writer's words, "unbottled a flood of others." Many more alleged eyewitnesses came forward. One account notes that this flap came about 50 years before Loch Ness became public. P.T. Barnum was already part of the story. He had offered $50,000 in 1873 for the "hide of the great Champlain serpent to add to my mammoth World's Fair Show," and he renewed the offer at $20,000 in 1887.

No sheriff's report, court record or state inquiry has surfaced. The oldest source found for the "20 rods" and "white spots" wording is Dennis Jay Hall's Champ Quest 1999. A claim that Mooney reported to the "Plattsburgh Morning Telegram" could not be verified. Even his office as sheriff is unconfirmed.

The date is the deepest problem. One regional history lists Mooney under 1873, beside a New York Times report of a railroad crew and the steamship W.B. Eddy. An 1873 New York Times report reportedly mentioned that "a county sheriff claimed to have seen it." The sighting may belong to 1873. Or two events may have merged. The accounts disagree on the distance and the size as well.

No hoax claim against Mooney has been found. For Champ sightings in general, sceptics, Joe Nickell among them, have offered rising logs, longnose gar, lake sturgeon, eels, otters swimming in a line, seiches and hoaxes. Critics add that the lake is too small to support a breeding population, and that there is "No physical proof."

Mooney's account is often called the first well-documented sighting by a credible official. The legend grew around it. About 180 documented sightings by 1992. Over 300 sightings reported since 1819, says the marker at Cumberland Head in Plattsburgh. Sandra Mansi's 1977 photograph, Port Henry's Champ Day and books by Robert E. Bartholomew and by Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell keep the serpent in view. The sheriff's open mouth, and its white spots, are still where many tellings begin.