Robert Smith walked down the crowded New York City sidewalk, humming to himself.
It was a good day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing. At least, he thought they were singing. Somewhere.
Honestly, he couldn’t say if they were or not over the noise. Carriages and wagons thundered noisily over cobblestones, the sound of horse’s hooves and rolling wooden wheels trying to drown out the cries of vendors and salesman.
Robert smiled. He loved the city.
He had been born there nearly thirty-five years before. He had run up and down these same streets as a boy before he had become a brick layer. It may not be the most glamourous job in the world, but it kept a roof over his head and bread on the table.
And beer in the belly, he thought.
Up ahead, a young newspaper boy called out the latest headlines, trying to sell papers to anyone and everyone. Robert quickened his pace and walked toward him.
“What paper?” he asked.
The boy stopped his sales pitch and looked Robert in the eye.
“The best paper in the city, sir. The Sun!”
Robert laughed and reached into his pocket. Taking out a penny, he handed it to the newsboy.
The boy took the coin, put it into his own pocket, and handed Robert a paper. Thanking him, he went back to shouting his sales pitch to the passersby.
Walking around the corner, Robert flipped open the newspaper and began to scan the headlines. He had always liked the Sun. Sure, there were other papers, but he didn’t really care for them.
He had plenty of work, but he scanned the ads anyway. There might always be a good job to be had out there; you could never be too sure.
Seeing nothing, Robert began to read the headlines.
As he scanned through them, one in particular caught his eye.
Silently, he read the story, letting it carry his mind to a faraway place that he had never been to. As he finished, he couldn’t hardly believe it.
Did they really have sea monsters in North Dakota? And where was North Dakota?
—
When the New York Sun ran its daily on October 21, 1894, some of the first headlines that people would have seen were about the Czar of Russia, angry Catholics, and radical goings-on in London.
They were exactly the kind of stories that its founder and publisher, Benjamin Day, loved to publish.
The first-ever edition of the Sun had run off the presses in 1833. Day wanted to run a paper that the common man would enjoy, like Robert Smith the brick layer. There were a lot more blue collar and lower-class white collar folks in the city than there were the intellectual or wealthy elites.
The paper was cheap; it only cost a penny. Within a year of the very first issue, it was the highest circulated newspaper in the United States.
In 1868, Charles Dana, a former editor for the prestigious New York Tribune, took over as editor for the Sun. He decided to up the Sun’s game and make it a little more high-brow for the readers, including more editorials and human interest stories.
The strategy paid off and the Sun gained a reputation for being a prime example of great journalism in the newspaper industry.
Regardless, that didn’t mean that the paper strayed far from it’s more sensational roots.
On that October day in 1894, people all over New York City would have found a very peculiar story on page 6. There was a monster sighted in a lake in North Dakota!
Yup. You heard me right. North Dakota.
I would not have thought of North Dakota as a place to have a lake monster. I would have never thought to look there first or last.
Sadly, it didn’t have a cool nickname like Nessie or Champ, the kind that inspires cute little plush toys you can give to your kids. Nope. It was just named after the lake where it lived, making it the Devils Lake Monster.
You heard me right: Devil’s Lake, a completely badass name if I ever heard one.
Devils Lake is the second largest lake in North Dakota, after Lake Sakakawea. However, while Lake Sakakawea was created in 1953 as a result of damming the Missouri River, Devil’s Lake is all-natural, covering over 160,000 acres. It’s more than large enough to hold thriving populations of pike, bass, and walleye.
And, of course, one large lake monster.
According to the 1894 article in the Sun, the Devils Lake Monster was roughly 80 feet long with glowing red eyes. Its skin was green and scaly, with large fins protruding from the sides of its long body. Horn-like growths jutted from jaws that looked like they belonged to an alligator.
The article related that it had been seen by numerous people who lived near the lake, including a steamboat captain who was also one of the most prominent citizens in the area.
The Dakota people, who lived in the region for centuries, have stories of something living in the lake that go back to a time long before the coming of American and European settlers. Tribal stories warned them to be careful around the water, lest the monsters in the lake eat them alive.
According to the 1894 accounts, the monster appeared about once a year, gradually making its way around the lake over the course of a day or two, and then disappearing until the next year.
Or at least it had been that way.
By 1894, the Devils Lake Monster hadn’t been seen since 1887. No one knows what the monster was doing during all that time, just that they had been seeing it every summer, and then nothing for seven years.
However, the next people to sight the monster wouldn’t have to wait as long.
The following year, in 1895, a man took a boat out on the lake for a day of relaxing and fishing.
He sat calmly, rod in hand, enjoying the sun on his face. If they had twelve packs back then, he would have no doubt been working his way through one. Then again, maybe he would have also been on medication that didn’t let him drink.
Anyway…guy sitting in a boat, fishing. Suddenly, he felt a familiar tug on his line.
Excitedly he reached out to start pulling the line in. As his hand neared the rod, the entire boat suddenly lurched forward.
What the hell was that? he must have thought.
The line went tight again as the boat began to speed through the water, pulled by something under the surface.
Okay – we all know that he’s getting pulled by the Devils Lake Monster. So my question is, why didn’t he let go? I mean, just let go of the rod and you should be fine. Instead, this unnamed soul holds on to it for dear life and takes a monster ride around the lake. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the original article that this story appeared in, so I guess that we’ll never know.
After the Devil’s Lake Monster took the fisherman for the ride of his life in 1895, it laid low for another nine years.
Then, in the summer of 1904, it was seen again.
A group of women were walking along the lake shore when they saw something splashing in the water several yards away.
This was loud splashing, not like a fish jumping out of the water or coming close to the surface. No, this was something big struggling in the water. It must have been far enough way for them to feel safe but still be seen well enough to make them curious.
They left and found pair of opera glasses, which are like low-powered binoculars used to watch details of stage operas from far off seats, then returned to see what was out in the lake. Luckily for them, it hadn’t left yet.
What they saw was something that they hadn’t ever seen before. It’s thick body was black and scaly with huge glowing eyes set in a head shaped like a snake.
The next time the monster was seen was in 1915, when multiple people saw it basking in the sun while floating on the surface of the water.
As the sightings of the monster rose and fell over the decades, so did the lake itself.
In the summer, the water would evaporate or soak into the rich soil and the lake would recede. In the spring, the snow would melt and fill the lake back up again. It was the natural cycle of things, and the locals had grown used to it.
Then, in the late 1980’s, everything changed.
For four years the region experienced a severe drought, and the lake got progressively smaller each year as the water dried up.
When the drought finally ended, torrential rains fell all through the summer, followed by heavy snows in the winter. In the spring, the temperatures rose, and the snow melted. The ground was already oversaturated and couldn’t take any more water, and it had nowhere to go.
Now the water rose, and it did so with a vengeance.
For years, farmers and their families had made their homes on the land around the lake. For generations they had tilled the fertile black earth, earning their livelihood from the crops they grew. They were confident in the natural cycle of the lake and lived there comfortably for generations.
Now they could do little more than watch as the lake slowly began to grow and spread, covering first their land, and then surrounding their homes and buildings.
At first, there were many who probably didn’t think too much about it. They had just had a drought; nature had to balance itself out. There would be a lot of water on the ground to compensate, then everything would go back to the way it always had been.
That first year, the lake had risen five feet, and the rain kept falling.
Slowly, the water began to creep further and further outwards. There was little farmers and homeowners could do other than watch as they lost their homes and livelihoods.
By 1999, Devil’s Lake was twice as big as it had been before, with thousands of acres underwater.
Some farmers rented or bought land nearby and continued what they had always done. Others embraced a rising new trade – tourism.
According to their ultra-cool website, Devil’s Lake offers a variety of things for visitors to do. They can hunt, shop, and eat at great restaurants. There’re also historical sites to visit, along with boating, and, of course, fishing.
But the past remains.
Houses and outbuildings stand surrounded by lake water, slowly rotting as they bear witness to a different time. Farm equipment lies underwater, providing a curious distraction to the boaters and fisherman who gaze into the depths of the lake.
Today, sensational newspaper accounts have been replaced by stories on websites, YouTube videos, and, of course, podcast episodes. Is there a lake monster living in Devils Lake? I honestly couldn’t tell you, but I like to keep an open mind.
Maybe, somewhere down there with the farm equipment and other remnants of farm life, something far stranger glides through the water, unseen by human eyes, and its only a matter of time before its seen again.
Sources
Breakey, Sharlene. Hell in High Water: The Story of Devils Lake, North Dakota. Modern Farmer, 8/24/2018
Devils Lake, North Dakota. Devilslakend.com
Wilson, Ron. A Look Back. North Dakota Game and Fish, gf.nd.gov, 2017
Larson, Troy. Legend of the Devils Lake Monster. Ghosts of North Dakota, ghosts of northdakota.wordpress.com, 2017
Mni Wakan Oyate. North Dakota Studies,
Garcia, Louis. Message from Garcia: The History and Culture of the Spirit Lake Dakota. Devil’s Lake Journal, 6/3/23
What is the Devils Lake Serpent? An ever-changing enigma. Kxnet.com, 10/26/24