Bluffy's
Hollar

A handful of Mormon pioneer journals from the Kanesville encampment (the settlement that would become Council Bluffs) make passing reference to a "dragon" or "water-wyrm" in the oxbow lakes north of the bluff. The original documents are held in scattered private and church collections; transcriptions in the Pottawattamie Historical archive are partial and, in several instances, second-hand. The provenance is soft. We include them because they are there.

A Works Progress Administration drainage crew surveying the Big Lake watershed allegedly recorded reptilian specimen, approx. 7 ft in a field-notebook during August of 1934. The notebook is referenced in a 1962 county-clerk inventory but cannot be located in the current county archive. We are told it was "pulled for conservation" sometime in the 1980s and not returned.

Roy Tvedt, brakeman. 5:40 AM. Reported in the Daily Nonpareil, page 6, under the headline GATOR IN BIG LAKE? BRAKEMAN SAYS YES. Ran three paragraphs. The paper printed a follow-up the next week concluding it was probably a displaced muskrat. Mr. Tvedt wrote a letter to the editor that began: I know what a muskrat looks like.

At 7:45 PM on a Saturday evening, eleven independent witnesses — including members of the Council Bluffs fire and police departments — observed a "reddish object about 500–600 feet in the air, falling straight down" into Big Lake Park. A flash, two arms of fire ten feet high, and scattered molten high-carbon steel debris were recovered. This event is independently documented by the Historical and Preservation Society of Pottawattamie County and has never been satisfactorily explained. In the three weeks following the impact, my grandfather recorded seven new sighting reports — more than the entire preceding year. The Haverstock family does not claim the two events are related. We note only that they occurred.

A family of four, visiting from Glenwood, rented a paddleboat from the seasonal concession (no longer in operation). Twenty minutes in, something hit the boat hard enough to spin us sideways. The youngest child, seated in the bow, reported seeing "scales, a row of them" break the surface two feet off the port hull. The boat was returned early. The rental log notes only: "gouge in left pontoon, no refund." The concession closed in 1991.

Beginning in fall 1987, returns on DNR-stocked rainbow trout ran consistently below modeled projections. An internal DNR memo dated March 4, 1996 attributes the shortfall to accumulated vegetative debris, likely large common carp (Cyprinus carpio) predation, and possible unauthorized removal. The memo is reproduced in the Archive below. In 1997 the stocking protocol was quietly modified to increase stock count by 15%. No public explanation was ever given.

5:47 AM. Henry "Hank" Haverstock — my father — took a single Polaroid photograph from the east side of the levy looking west into the Hollar. He was there to photograph waterfowl. He did not see the animal in the viewfinder; he saw it only when the Polaroid developed. He told my mother what he'd gotten, sat at the kitchen table for fifteen minutes, and then said only: I'm glad it was a Polaroid. I'd have never trusted a negative. The original hangs in the shoppe behind glass. A scan is reproduced below. Believe what you will.

A junior from Abraham Lincoln High School, on a training run with the girls' cross-country team, fell behind on the levy path. She reported seeing something bigger than me slide off the levy into the water approximately fifteen feet ahead. She was teased for it for the rest of the season. In 2017, as an adult, she sent us a signed statement reaffirming the account without alteration. She declined to be named.

During the historic 2011 Missouri River flood, which inundated large portions of western Iowa and eastern Nebraska, Big Lake breached its levy for nine days. The Haverstock Archive received nineteen sighting reports in June alone — the most of any month on record. Three reports independently described the animal as "moving overland, across the access road, toward the trees." Post-flood, reports dropped to near zero for sixteen months. Some of us think it left. Some of us think it found somewhere quieter.

A Council Bluffs resident flying a consumer drone over the south ponds captured three seconds of footage showing something long and dark making a slow S-turn beneath the surface before disappearing into shadow. The footage was posted to a regional Facebook group, received 412 comments, and was taken down four days later. We have a copy. It convinces the convinced and is dismissed by the dismissive. Such is the nature of the thing.

An anonymous witness — whose identity and occupation are known to the Archive and verified — reported, from a distance of approximately thirty yards in full daylight, an animal they estimated at twelve to fourteen feet. The witness took no photograph. The witness was not carrying a phone. The witness said, by way of explanation: I didn't want to look away.