The Tombstone Thunderbird: the Winged Monster of the Huachuca Desert

Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Spring of 1890. On Saturday 26 April, the Tombstone Epitaph printed a story under the headline "Found on the Desert." Its subhead promised more: "A Strange Winged Monster Discovered and Killed on the Huachuca Desert." The encounter, the paper said, had happened "last Sunday." That was 20 April 1890.

Two ranchers were returning home from the Huachuca Mountains. On the desert between the Whetstone and Huachuca mountains, they came across something. In the paper's words: "A winged monster, resembling a huge alligator with an extremely elongated tail and an immense pair of wings."

It was spent. "The creature was evidently greatly exhausted by a long flight and when discovered was able to fly but a short distance at a time." The men, on horseback and armed with Winchesters, went after it. The chase ran for several miles. When they were near enough, they opened fire and wounded it.

The creature turned on them. Because it was exhausted, they were able to keep out of its way. A few well directed shots later, "The monster partly rolled over and remained motionless."

The reported measurements were staggering. About 92 feet long. Wings of 78 feet each, about 160 feet tip to tip, thick and nearly transparent, with no feathers. A head about 8 feet long, jaws full of sharp teeth. Protruding eyes "as large as a dinner plate." Two feet, set near where the wings joined the body. The men cut off part of a wing as proof. "Late last night one of them arrived in this city for supplies and to make the necessary preparations to skin the creature." The hide, the paper said, would go east for scientists to examine.

The ranchers were never named. Nearly eighty years later, Harry F. McClure of Colorado Springs wrote to Old West after J. K. Parrish revived the tale in its Fall 1969 issue. McClure said he had known the two men as a boy. In his version the wingspan was 20 to 30 feet. The creature was out of range of their rifles. Their horses were spooked and would not chase it. It escaped, and the men rode into town with nothing. The newspaper, he said, embroidered the rest.

The Epitaph printed no picture, and no follow-up. Yet in May 1963 Jack Pearl, writing in Saga, moved the story to 1886 and described a photo of the carcass nailed to a wall, men posing for scale. Ivan T. Sanderson said he once had a photostat of it, lent it out, and lost it. John A. Keel claimed to have seen it too. Strange Magazine editor Mark Chorvinsky asked readers for help over several issues, culminating in "Cowboys and Dragons" in 2000. Searches of Saga, True, Argosy, Fate and Western magazine archives turned up nothing.

Sceptics point to the frontier habit of printing invented tall tales beside real news. No names. No follow-up. No hide. Those who accept McClure's account suggest a real animal, misjudged in size. The photo itself is often called a Mandela effect, a vivid description remembered as an image. A 2000 publicity still from FreakyLinks, showing Civil War re-enactors over a prop pterosaur, only deepened the confusion.

The case is often called the earliest recorded thunderbird encounter. It became cryptozoology's best-known lost photo. As Tombstone paranormal historian Joshua Hawley told KGUN9: "This legend will never end."