White River Monster

Since the 1800s, residents along the White River near Newport have reported a massive creature described as gray-skinned, the size of a boxcar, with a spiny backbone. A 1937 sighting prompted plantation owner Bramlett Bateman to seek permission to capture it. In 1971 an enormous trail of flattened vegetation and three-toed tracks 14 inches across were found on a river island. Arkansas formally created the 'White River Monster Refuge' in 1973, making it illegal to harm the creature — the only such legal protection for a cryptid in the United States.