Sharlie of Payette Lake

Sighting reports since the 1920s; the name comes from a 1954 contest

Payette Lake is a sheet of crisp glacial water covering 5,330 acres in Idaho, with the resort town of McCall built around it and a deepest recorded depth of 392 feet. Somewhere in that depth, some say, lives Sharlie, also known as Slimy Slim and the Twilight Dragon of Payette Lake.

The idea may be older than any settler. Native people are said to have believed that an evil spirit dwelt in the lake. The first documented sighting by newcomers came in 1920, when workers cutting ties at the upper end of the lake saw what they took for a log, until the log began to move.

The 1940s brought the most detailed reports. In August 1944 several groups of people described a serpent 30 to 35 feet long with a dinosaur-like head, pronounced jaws, humps like a camel's and skin like a shell. In September 1946 a party of twenty watched it together, and Dr. G. A. Taylor of Nampa said it appeared to be between 30 and 40 feet long, kept diving into the water and left a wake about like a small motor boat's. As the word spread, tourists began coming to McCall in the hope of seeing it.

In 1954 A. Boone McCallum, editor of the local Star News, held a contest to give the creature a name. The winner, a woman from Springfield, Virginia, wrote to suggest calling it Sharlie, after "Vas you der, Sharlie?", the catchphrase of the radio comedian Jack Pearl. Sightings went on, dozens of them from 1956 onward; the last documented is variously put at 1997 or 2002.

Nobody has produced proof. Some think the monster is simply a story; others suspect a giant sturgeon or some other unusually big fish. McCall, either way, has adopted it. South of the lake runs Sharlie Lane, a small public garden on the west shore is Sharlie's Garden, the gift shops sell Sharlie T-shirts and stuffed toys, and every year during the town's winter carnival at least one sculptor carves a giant Sharlie in ice. All summer the water skiers, wakeboarders and jet skiers keep crossing the lake regardless.