Salt Lake Fire Drake

 

The Salt Lake Fire Drake is a flying cryptid seen near the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It was seen once in 1903, and again just under a hundred years later, in 2001. This cryptid is often touted as a living pterosaur, however in my research I found this cryptid to be something far stranger.

On September 3rd, 1903, a flying creature was seen by multiple witnesses on Stansbury Island, in the south end of the Great Salt Lake. Two hunters, John Barry and Martin Gilbert, gave the most detailed report of the creature. They described it as equal mixes of bat, fish and alligator, having the head of an alligator, the wings of a bat and the tail of a fish. In addition the creature was covered in either thick, rough scales, or salt accretions from the lake. The creature got its name from the fiery rainbow iridescence of its wings, shining with reflected sunlight.

The two men described the monster as being prehistoric in nature, although they didn’t specifically say it was a pterosaur. Othniel Marsh had already discovered pteranodon in 1870, so people had a basic idea of what a pterosaur looked like by the end of the bone wars, especially Barry, who was a fossil collector and citizen scientist. As well, at the time all reptiles, including living ones, were described as prehistoric or living fossils.

The fire drake was described as “simply tremendous” with a head to length size of 65 feet, and a wingspan of 100 feet, much larger than even quetzalcoatlus.

The two hunters said the monster had flown over them in the evening sun, moving from the northwest to the south. An hour later, after the sun had set, the creature returned and flew over them again, this time carrying a horse in its jaws. The horse was already dead and badly mangled. The drake took its catch into the nearby cliffs, where the men could hear it eating for some time. Only after all fell silent did the hunters feel safe to return to camp.

In the morning the two men found some reptilian footprints which they assumed were from the creature. It was from these that Mr. Barry was able to get an estimate of the creature’s immense size. Unfortunately no casts were taken of the prints.

The next sighting happened in 2001 by three children, Devon Roberts, his brother Dallin, and a third unnamed child. Dallin was said to be 12 years old at the time, the other children’s ages were not given. The children described what they saw as a giant bird on fire flying over a ranch near the Salt Lake. They said the creature was able to turn its fire on and off. When it lit up, all the cattle it flew over would go into a panic. Dallin said the creature was seen from a far distance, so it’s unknown if he described it as a bird simply because it was a flying creature he couldn’t see any more details on, or if the three children had actually seen a completely different monster from the men in 1903.

Jonathan D Whitcomb, a ‘living pterosaur investigator’ interviewed Devon and Dallin. From this he interpreted both their sighting and the 1903 one as a bioluminescent pterosaur, similar to the Ropen from New Guinea. Mr. Whitcomb also interpreted a nearby petroglyph as a pterosaur, which has since been debunked. Other ‘living pterosaur researchers’ have chalked the outline of a pterosaur on the petroglyph in an absolutely disgusting act of vandalism. https://www.science.org/content/article/winged-monster-ancient-rock-art-debunked-scientists

The story of this cryptid outlines a dangerous trend in Fortean research, where unscrupulous researchers will ‘edit’ evidence and ignore details of witness testimony all in an effort to shoehorn a cryptid of unknown affiliations into the interpretation they desire, usually a prehistoric creature of some kind. What witnesses of high strangeness are actually seeing is far more bizarre than a mere dinosaur. Often their experiences witnessing these creatures is traumatic, and we owe it to them to at least relay their stories accurately. It’s bad enough fighting insultingly dismissive skeptic interpretations, such as mothman being a crane. Similarly inaccurate reporting from inside fortean research makes any truth on the subject impossible to discover.