The History of Johnnie

The First Account: Captain Adams and the Lucy & Nancy

The earliest known published account of the St. Johns River Monster dates to February 18, 1849, when Captain Adams, commanding a Florida schooner called the Lucy and Nancy, reported an encounter at the mouth of the St. Johns River. The story was published in a paper called The Examiner and later referenced in the Franklin Daily Journal of Indiana (October 8, 1970) in a column called “The Way Things Used to Be” by Verne Vandivier.

The monster “lifted its head, which was like that of a snake, several times out of the water and at such times displayed the most of his body, exhibiting a pair of frightful fins several feet in length.” Captain Adams judged the creature to be approximately 90 feet in length. “Its neck tapered from the head of the body and appeared to be about seven feet across the widest part of the back. The color of the creature was a dirty brown.”

According to Vandivier’s account, the citizens of Jacksonville vouched fully for Captain Adams’s character and found it “unthinkable” that he “would invent such a story.”

“Borinkus” — The River Monster by Another Name

Former Florida State Attorney J.W. “Jesse” Hunter, writing to the Orlando Sentinel in response to 1953 coverage, recalled that back in the 1910s, creatures like the St. Johns River Monster were common sights in the Jacksonville area. Hunter gave them the name “Borinkus” — though whether the name was genuine folklore or his own embellishment is unclear.

Hunter claimed that a personal friend, citrus magnate Barney Dillard of Volusia, “used to use a team of them to ferry across the river.” No corroborating account has surfaced, and Hunter was known for a sardonic wit. Whatever the case, his recollection confirms that stories of the creature circulated long before the 1950s press coverage.

The $5,000 Bounty — And a Monster That Eats Hyacinths

By 1953, the St. Johns River Monster had crossed from local legend into mainstream Florida press. In April 1953, the Orlando Evening Star ran substantial coverage of new sightings. That October, the Orlando Sentinel put a dollar figure on it.

“St. Johns River Has Hyacinth Eating Monster, 35-feet Long” — vintage newspaper clipping, circa 1953

Owen Godwin, owner of Godwin’s Snake Village in Kissimmee, Florida, offered five thousand dollars for the living monster — or one thousand for the slain beast. There was a condition: the creature must stretch at least 30 feet and have a horn like a narwhal. “At least six witnesses said he does,” the Sentinel noted.

In October 1953, the same paper reported that “a lady” described the St. Johns River Monster as “the beast that swims like a fish and walks like a dog.” After it “came up to her boat” somewhere between Orlando and Jacksonville, “two other parties of fisherfolk reported having seen the beast.” The creature stretched 35 feet long, with “a head 30 inches wide and a 10 inch horn in the middle of its head.”

By June 1954, Homer J. Wright, president of the Astor, Florida Chamber of Commerce, told the Sentinel that an unnamed wildlife officer “who didn’t happen to have his camera with him at the time” had recently spotted the river monster. Wright said he “wouldn’t be surprised at all if in the wilds of Florida there weren’t some creature like that monster.”

Scientists of the day pushed back, suggesting the creature was a manatee — the same explanation Christopher Columbus used centuries earlier when he wrote of seeing mermaids.

The Color of Boiled Shrimp

The most famous modern sighting began quietly, on a fishing trip. Jacksonville glass installers Wallace McLean, 24, and Eddie St. John, 33, were out on the St. Johns with friends when Brenda Langley suddenly stood up in the boat, pointed, and gasped.

Coverage from The Tampa Tribune, January 18, 1976

McLean watched the monster’s head rise from the water “like a periscope,” turn, and hold his gaze for a full minute and a half. What he saw defied easy explanation. The creature was pink — vividly, unmistakably pink.

Langley, when asked what it looked like, said simply: “Like pictures of dragons.” Her companion Dorothy Abram added that it looked “like a dinosaur with its skin pulled back so all its bones were showing.”

The group initially stayed silent, afraid no one would believe them. When the story finally broke months later — covered by The Florida Times-Union and The Tampa Tribune in January 1976 — McLean produced a hand-drawn sketch of the creature. He said scientists called from as far away as England. An 80-year-old woman phoned him to confirm she wasn’t lying: she had seen the “big pink creature herself — 40 years ago.”

McLean’s drawing remains the only known eyewitness illustration of the St. Johns River Monster.

Jacksonville Takes Notice — The Press Dives In

A vintage editorial cartoon from Florida press coverage of the St. Johns River Monster

Once the McLean story broke in January 1976, Jacksonville’s newspapers ran with it. The Tampa Tribune compared the creature to Bigfoot, the Swamp Ape, and the Loch Ness Monster — writing that “the Serpent of the St. Johns seems to thrive on publicity.”

Marine Patrol Captain D.B. Newbold told the Tribune: “They used to report them to me back in the ’50s when I was water patrolling. What they’re seeing are manatee (sea cows) playing.” He added dryly that his office had no official record of monster sightings: “We just keep records of manatee and other animals protected by state and federal laws. We don’t have any laws protecting sea monsters.”

But other witnesses were harder to dismiss. Larry Atkinson and Bobby Holt were fishing from the Fuller Warren Bridge on a December morning when they saw it in the middle of the channel below them.

Atkinson was specific about what ruled out the easy explanations: “It wasn’t an otter, wasn’t sea cows and it wasn’t a snake. Snakes swim sideways and this thing, whatever it was, had humps and it was moving in an up-and-down motion. Snakes don’t do that.”

“I Know What I Seen” — Baumgartner at LaSalle Street

The foot of LaSalle Street in San Marco — where John Baumgartner’s crew encountered the creature

John Baumgartner, foreman for the Jacksonville Public Works Commission, was working in the San Marco neighborhood near the LaSalle Street bulkhead when something surfaced in the river that made no sense to him or his crew. A “watermelon-sized head” rose about a foot above the waterline. Then came a sound: “pssssh” — like a snort — and a spray shot upward.

One of Baumgartner’s workers caught a glimpse of “a split tail” rising from the water. The crew estimated the beast “could have been 20 feet long.” They followed its course for another half hour before it dove and disappeared.

Baumgartner was not a man given to fantasy. He had never seen anything like it, “not even on Jacques Cousteau.” He knew what the skeptics would say. But he also knew what he’d observed, and he refused to call it a monster.

That description — kind, innocent, casual — has defined Johnnie ever since. Not a threat. Not a menace. Something ancient and gentle, sharing the river with a city that barely knew it was there.

Kathy Kirkland at Stockton Park

Stockton Park on the St. Johns River — site of a July 1976 sighting

In July 1976, Kathy Kirkland was fishing from Stockton Park when something surfaced about 50 feet from shore — “a head the size of a basketball.” Kirkland initially thought it might be three sea cows. The longer she watched, the more certain she became: “after watching it a while, I realized it was all connected together.”

The Otter Theory — And Why It Doesn’t Explain Everything

Two longtime Jacksonville residents, H.L. Walters and Earl Boylston, came forward with what they believed was the solution. Walters said he had seen “Johnnie” multiple times since the early 1960s. The first time, it had frightened him: “God! What a snake! It must be 30 feet long!” But weeks later, he got close enough to spit in its eye — and recognized what he was seeing.

Not a serpent at all — a long line of otters, “swimming nose to tail.” As they “dip in and out of the water in a long single-file parade,” Walters said, “they create the illusion of one long serpentine creature.” Boylston agreed. Walters added with characteristic Florida directness: if a real sea monster lived in the St. Johns, some redneck would have shot it a long time ago.

Dr. Harold J. Humm, a University of South Florida marine science professor, offered another candidate: moray eels, which “come in both dark and brightly colored varieties” and “reach a length of 15 to 20 feet.” He couldn’t imagine one in the St. Johns — but he couldn’t rule it out.

None of these explanations fully account for the pink coloration Wallace McLean described. None explain John Baumgartner’s “split tail.” And none satisfy the eyewitnesses who insist they saw something that defied every ordinary category.

Simon Smith and the Ongoing Record

Simon Smith — keeper of snakes and lizards, self-described “amateur cryptozoologist,” resident of Old Gainesville Road on Jacksonville’s Westside — says he has tracked the St. Johns River Monster for decades. He insists people almost always get key details wrong. For one thing: “Johnnie is a she,” a fact he considers “obvious to anybody ever studied Marine Science.”

Smith says sightings have continued in recent years, but that people today are too skeptical of media coverage to report what they see. The record may be incomplete. The river keeps its secrets.