The White River begins just south of Fayetteville, flows
northward into southern Missouri, then makes its way south again into Arkansas,
eventually emptying into the Mississippi River in Desha County. At one point in the river’s travels, it
passes through the town of Newport in Jackson County, and here is where this
month’s mystery begins.
In late June, 1937, Brambelett Bateman walked down to the
edge of the river near his home ten miles south of Newport. He had been concerned about the fact that the
river level seemed to have dropped a full fifteen feet since the night
before. While he stood there puzzling
over this strange occurrence, he noticed something thrashing out towards the
middle of the river. “Whatever it was,
and everyone and his brother has speculated about that, it was alive and large,
at least the length of two Buicks,” he told the Newport Daily Independent in 1971.
He watched the object bob up and down in the water, throwing a
tremendous amount of water into the air.
Over the next few months, Bateman claimed to have seen the
phenomenon hundreds of times, and it seems that all of Jackson County got
interested in what they quickly began calling the White River Monster. Observers reported that the monster seemed to
surface every afternoon and float around on the surface for around ten to
fifteen minutes at a time. The monster
never reared its head from the water, leaving many to speculate as to what its
head looked like. Others that saw it
that summer reported that it had smooth, scaleless, grey skin. People flocked to the Bateman farm to try to
catch a glimpse of the White River Monster.
Enterprising vendors set up a temporary dance stage next to the river
along with several concession stands. It
was all the rage that summer to go and see if one could catch a glimpse of the
monster.
Memphis radio station WREC came to Newport hoping to
broadcast from the shoreline near the site.
Along with the radio men, reporters from the Memphis Commercial Appeal also came, cameras in hand, hoping to
take a picture of the creature. For
some, though, photographing the monster was not enough. Several people hoped to
catch the monster and went so far as to ask the Arkansas Game and Fish
Commission for permission to use dynamite on the river monster to blast it out
of its hiding place. Luckily for the
monster, and whatever other creatures lived in the river, the agency denied
such a request. And then, just as
suddenly as it began, it stopped. Eventually
the monster was only a memory, something old men could discuss over coffee at
the local diner. Maybe the constant
public attention had been enough to cause the monster to seek a quieter abode.
In the summer of 1971, all of that changed. That spring, the entire state had been thrown
into frenzy by the sighting of a monster near Fouke in southwestern
Arkansas. Just as the shock of the Fouke
monster was beginning to fade, the White River Monster made another
appearance. On June 18, 1971, reporter
Mike Masterson of the Newport Daily
Independent received a call from an anonymous man who claimed to have seen
the monster. The witness claimed that
the monster was as long as three or four pickup trucks, “I was scared . .
. I didn’t see his head, but I didn’t
have to. His body was enough to scare me bad.”
This time, though, some would see the monster’s head. Earnest Denks claimed that he saw the monster
rear its head out of the water, revealing a large pointed bone sticking out of
its forehead. When skeptics questioned
Denks about his sighting and his sobriety, he told reporters, “I am a
god-fearing man, and haven’t touched liquor in thirty years.”
This time, reporters were able to get a photograph of the
monster. Unfortunately, like its cousin
in Loch Ness, the monster is not known for holding steady for press
photos. The picture shows little more
than ripples on the water. That same
summer a man found tracks on an island on the White River. “I didn’t believe in this monster hoaky until
I saw those tracks,” he told Newport reporters.
Soon, the man was joined by a game warden and several members of law
enforcement including Jackson County Sheriff Ralph Henderson. They took plaster casts of the prints, some
of which were as large as 14 inches long.
Soon, though, like in the 1937 sightings, the monster soon disappeared
again.
Folklorist Jimmy Driftwood argued that the monster was
certainly real. He pointed to the 1937
reports as well as folklore that the monster had been spotted in the 1890s as
proof of the monster’s existence. The
creature seemed to appear every 40 years or so, Driftwood argued. “He’s just like the eel,” he told reporters,
“He comes up the White river to get big, then goes back to the Sargasso
Sea.” The Newport Daily Independent worried that the constant attention from
the public was responsible for the sudden disappearances of the creature. It called for the public to protect the
habitat of the creature, not hunt it.
“If we go around declaring open season on our monsters, before you know
it, they’ll all be extinct,” it reasoned. As such, a couple of years later, State
Senator Robert Harvey of Swifton, sponsored a bill in the state legislature
establishing a portion of the White River as the White River Monster Sanctuary
and Refuge. This resolution, which
passed in 1973, declared that it is illegal to “molest, kill, trample, or harm
the White River Monster while in its native retreat.” So, whether or not it is a large sturgeon, an
alligator gar, or some strange leftover from prehistoric times, it is a
protected species in the state of Arkansas, possibly the only monster to have
such an official designation. Big Foot,
and the Fouke Monster, for that matter, must be green with envy.
