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Rains Bring More Than Floodwaters

to Death Valley

by Cecile Page Vargo

          She appears at least once every hundred years or so throughout history and throughout various places on earth, but there’s little record and not many people around from those earlier time periods to confirm her existence. Since the last quarter of the 1800’s the sightings have been more frequent, particularly in Loch Ness, Scotland and in Death Valley, California. First sightings in Death Valley were by the ancient one’s and those were recorded in the rocks near ancient hunting blinds and watering holes. The white men that later came and saw the red man’s squiggly “S” shaped marks etched in the rocks misinterpreted them as rattle snakes, not sea serpents or monsters or overgrown reptilians. Had Manly and his party of 49’ers been smarter about such things they might have recognized the red man’s etchings for what they really were, and recorded a few sightings of their own. Since Scotland’s first recorded sightings were actually later than 1849, it’s highly possible that between the time of the ancient Indian carvings in the year 1000 AD, and 1871, the lake creature stayed away from the lowest spots of the California desert.

Legends of the Loch Ness Monster AKA Nessie, started in 565 A.D with an account of Saint Columba rescuing a swimmer from a creature in Loch Ness, Scotland. From then on, various stories of such a creature emerged, but all were virtually unrecorded until the 20th century. In 1933 a new road was built along the Loch Ness lake shore enabling people to visit the area in large numbers and reports of sightings dramatically increased. Most recently, Nessie was sighted, in of all places, Badwater, Death Valley, California.

 

          The following are three reports of many Nessie sightings that occurred in both Loch Ness and Death Valley in the same time frame. It does appear that Nessie originated from Scotland, but tired of the climate and every so many years would head to Death Valley for a vacation in a warmer, dryer area. She had this uncanny ability to arrive when she knew there were going to be cloudbursts and thunderstorms, as she did require some water to keep her scales from drying up, and to quench her thirst.   

Observed in Scotland at Loch Ness by D.  Mackenzie                                 
Time: 1200                                                                                           
Date: October 1871
Motion: Slow, then moved off at speed
Description: Log like, then up-turned boat

Death Valley , July of 1871:  Charles Frederick Reinhold Hahn, an old prospector from the mines of Cerro Gordo , enjoyed sitting around the campfire telling stories of a ancient sea serpents to his buddies in the Wheeler expedition party this same year. Lieutenant D. A. Lyle was in charge of the detachment that was sent with Hahn and 32 other men in the middle of July from Camp Independence, through the White Mountains , Mazourka Canyon , the north end of Saline Valley and the mountain range on the eastern side. They desperately required water, so Hahn took out for Grapevine Spring which was 35-40 miles away in search for it. He took Indian Sam and naturalist John Koehler with him. Hahn took off on his own away from his two traveling buddies in desperate search for that water after getting tired of hearing Naturalist Koehler complain about there lack of success in finding it. Koehler later lied about it, but he actually followed Hahn from a distance to see what he was up to. Meantime old mother nature stirred up a giant thunderstorm and the bottom of the canyon turned into a raging river. Koehler managed to run for higher ground, losing site of Hahn for a brief moment, in the process. He grabbed his field glasses for a closer look, once he was sure he wasn’t going to be swallowed by the newly created river. He spotted what he thought was a huge log in the water with someone on it. He focused his field glasses in a little closer and there was Hahn riding on the back of a creature that matched the description of the sea serpents he was so fond of talking about around the campfire. Koehler was relieved when days later he was able to take Lieutenant Lyle on a wild goose chase following some old burros tracks up the same canyon, which was now dried up back to it’s more natural state because of the extreme heat of July.  When the burro tracks disappeared off into an unapproachable ravine, Lyle came to the conclusion  Hahn had led them into a dilemma which he could not extricate them from, and deserted for the White Mountains. A month later, another man from a second Wheeler party, also a guide chosen from Cerro Gordo Camp, disappeared under similar circumstances. The water creature, we now know as Nessie, realized she had almost been discovered both times, so she hightailed it down an underground tunnel that eventually took her out to sea and to Scotland where there was a brief sighting recorded by D Mackenzie  on October 1871. 


Observer: Roderick Matheson
Time: Unknown
Date: 1885
Motion: Forward
Description: Described as "the biggest thing I ever saw in my Life, neck like a horse with a mane.
 "

In his book Death Valley and The Amargosa A Land of Illusion, Richard E. Lingenfelter tells the story of the altercation between Borax teamster Al Bryson and his swamper Sterling Wassam on October 5, 1886.  You can read his version on page 184 of his book. However researchers for Explore Historic California have uncovered a rare archive from October 6, 1885 , which lead us to believe this is what really happened. From what we can tell the dates were switched and the story altered as the years went by so no one would  find out the real truth, as no one would have believed the real truth anyway.  

Teamster Bryson and swamper Wassam had just started up for the season. They were hauling the summer’s borax from the Amargosa works to Mojave. For some reason the mules were balking all morning, and Bryson was in a bad mood because of it. They decided to stop for lunch at Saratoga Springs.  As Bryson took his butcher knife to open a can of beef, he continually cussed out Wassam for not keeping the knife sharper. When Wassam made some reply back, Bryson lunged at him with the knife still in his hand. The swamper jumped back and ran behind one of the wagons. Bryson pursued him. As the teamster rounded the corner, Wassam whacked him with a shovel, knocking Bryson out cold, but not dead. He turned over the wagons, and unhitched the mules. He rode one mule & Bryson was tied to the back of the other, still unconscious. Wassam was sorely remorseful, and had every intention of seeking medical help. Along the way, he came to Badwater, which had turned into a full lake from another one of Death Valley ’s infamous but only occasional rain storms. It was tough going through the water with the two mules, one still with the teamster still oblivious to the rest of the world tied to it’s back. But Wassam was determined, for he knew if he could just get across the newly formed Badwater lake, there was medical help on the other side. As luck would have it there were clouds building up once again, and a great deluge of water came down from the sky. Wassam found he was more than mule knee deep in water now, and that water was raging like a tempest sea. He got caught in a great whirlpool, which swept up the mule with swamper Bryson. In a great luck of fate, Wassam himself managed to swim away with his mule to dry land and safety. He pulled himself and the mule out of the water just in time to pause and watch as a  giant serpent like creature rose from the subsiding whirlpool, the mule with Bryson caught up in it’s long hairy mane. Wassam shook his head in disbelief, then continued on for 60 miles until he caught up with another Borax mule team and accompanied them in to Mojave where he was arrested, tried for murder and acquitted. One can only assume that the great serpent like monster with the long hairy horses neck was that of Nessie, and she hightailed back through the underground tunnel out to sea and to Scotland to be sited in November 1885 by Roderick Matheson.


Observer: F. Fraser, and two others
Time: Afternoon
Date: December 1903
Motion: Could not get closer by rowing towards it.
Description: "Hump like upturned boat"

In November of  1903, a famous Scottish resident of  Death Valley , named Walter, made this report: 

           “I come around a big turn in the gully used for a road and there it was. That Nessie Sea Monster from Scotland...What the heck!  Looked like she was done for, so far away from that water and green that she was used to over there. Sure hated to think I had to shoot her. 

          “I wuz carryin’ my 30-30 all the time, waitin’ for the chance. Well it comes. I waylays her for a bit. She was shakin’ like hell. Scairt to death. Then I take out a shovel and tell her that she was goin’ to have to dig her own way back to Loch Ness. 

           “She was diggin’ and beggin’ all the time. I makes her dig about an hour and she was getting’ scairt more and more. Sure I was goin’ to shoot her if she didn’t find water soon.”


          Nessie must have found water, because no reports of a dead sea monster were ever recorded in the Death Valley region in 1902. However, she was spotted alive and well by F. Fraser and friends, exactly a month after Walter Scott gave her that shovel and told her to start digging.

          No Nessie sightings were recorded again in the most arid region of the United States, until the great rains of summer 2004 and winter 2005, when she sprouted up in the newly formed Badwater Lake, just at the same time millions of wildflowers decided to do the same. Although there were hundreds of tourists visiting Badwater, most were too busy ooooooh - ing and aaaaah- ing over the  wildflowers to notice the legendary Badwater Nessie enjoying her first desert vacation in over a century.  

Bibliography  

Death Valley & The Amargosa: A Land of Illusion

by Richard E. Lingenfelter

University of California Press

 

Death Valley Scotty Rides Again

by Earl C. Driskell

Stovepipe Wells

Death Valley , California

 

Death Valley, The Facts

by W. A. Chalfant

Stanford University Press

 

http://www.nessie.co.uk/sight.html


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