TAHOE MONSTER
by Skylaire AlfvegrenLake Tahoe, straddling the Nevada-California border, has mesmerized white settlers since John Fremont laid eyes on it in the winter of 1844. Mark Twain, who had the distinction of starting the lake’s first forest fire during a visit in 1861, described it as "a noble sheet of blue water lifted 6,000 three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that tower aloft a full 3,000 feet higher still!” To give an idea of Tahoe’s depths, all of California could be completely immersed in its water to a depth of 14 1/2 inches; it’s the tenth deepest lake in the world, the largest high atmosphere lake in the northern hemisphere, and the second deepest. With 71 miles of shoreline, portions of which remain deeply forested, Tahoe is a place of perennial legend.
The local Washoe Indians had many tales of creatures and spirits inhabiting the Tahoe region. The most persistent is that of the Big Fish, a water-dwelling monster now nicknamed Tahoe Tessie. Tales of the beast made it into local papers almost as soon as whites began inhabiting the shores of Tahoe, and persist to this day. How many lake monsters can claim a best-selling children’s book and a mention on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?”
Today the creature is most often associated with Bob McCormick’s Tessie character, but the "Big Fish" was notoriously nasty in the 1800s. The Carson City Daily Index of May 11,1883 relates an encounter with a monstrosity that is anything but cute and cuddly. "He suddenly rose in front of the steamer Governor Stanford and disputed her passage… the fish leaped upward, and snapping off the bowstrip, went away with it in its mouth." It further reports that in 1863 it had “attacked a large boat and drowned four Canadians.” Captain Lapham, builder of the Stanford, told the paper he thought “there is just as much probability” of something huge dwelling in the lake “as a huge saltwater fish in the bottom of the sea.” He even built a small schooner, and sent for “hook and line that is strong enough to hold 1000 pounds… forever on the alert to capture what I positively believe exists.”
What to do with something you don’t understand? Annihilate it with “a harpoon gun!” Reports were so numerous that the beast was nicknamed Lizzie Ann in the ‘30s, and hunting parties were organized to capture what would surely be the ultimate fishing trophy. But it continued to outsmart its would-be captors.
There have been accounts of a standard-issue lake monster--in June, 1888, the Carson Morning Appeal reported "the head of the monster, the only part above water” was easily the length of the spectators’ rowboat and “resembled a serpent in appearance"--but the great majority of sightings, from the pioneer days to the present, are interchangeably fish-like. In August of 1884, The Carson Daily Index described a sighting four years prior: "They plainly saw a huge fish,” estimating it at 600 pounds, and “about 14 to 15 feet long from tip to tip.”
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