Sharlie is an unidentified animal said to inhabit 5,300-acre Payette Lake in the mountains of west central Idaho. The object of numerous sightings, the creature was generally known before 1954 as “Slimy Slim,” and it has now become established in the contemporary folklore of McCall, a town and tourist destination on the lake. Stories about Sharlie of Payette Lake illustrate the profound local orientation that is inherent in much of American folklore.
Accounts of the Payette Lake area written by European American settlers refer vaguely to Native American legends of a malevolent spirit in the lake. However, the earliest recorded sighting of what could be a real animal dates from the early 1920s, when workers cutting railroad ties on the northern shores of the lake watched what appeared to be an eight-foot log moving on the surface of the water.
In the following decade there were reports of a similar creature near the Brown Tie and Lumber Mill on the lake’s southern shores, including one by fifteen employees, who described what they saw as having a body about twelve feet long that undulated as it swam. Another sighting from the same period by a resident of a nearby Civilian Conservation Corps camp mentioned an animal that raised its dog-like head about twenty inches out of the water.
There were more than two dozen sightings in 1944. One witness described an animal with the truncated head of a crocodile moving with an undulating motion at about five miles per hour. Another observer saw a thirty-five-foot creature with humps resembling those of a camel; it, too, moved with an undulating motion but also appeared to have a kind of shell. Time magazine carried a story that year, quoting sober, firsthand reports but treating the matter as something of a joke (“Slimy Slim” 1944, 22).
The large number of reported sightings continued into the next decade, and in 1954 the Payette Lake Star, with the support of the Idaho Statesman (published some ninety miles away in the state capital of Boise), sponsored a contest to name the animal. The judges, among them the governor of Idaho, chose “Sharlie” as the winning entry. Submitted by former Idaho resident Le Isle Hennefer Tury, the name was derived from a catchphrase popularized by radio performer Jack Pearl (McCallum 1954, 1).
The only thorough investigation of Sharlie to date was conducted by Gary S. Mangiacopra, who interviewed several witnesses, including real estate agent Pauline Miller. Having watched a very large animal near the surface of Payette Lake from the McCall city dock, Miller described a creature similar in some characteristics to what others had observed, but strikingly different in others. She estimated its length at fifty to sixty feet and mentioned what appeared to be a shell on its back and scales on its sides. The body tapered to a small tail flattened horizontally—a feature typical of such mammals as porpoises and seals.
Mangiacopra also interviewed a forester from the Payette National Forest, Hank M. Shank, who attributed sightings of Sharlie to “over-lapping waves (from power boats) and beaver and muskrat swimming” (Mangiacopra 1980, 45). Shank based his skepticism on the fact that Payette Lake is relatively poor in the kinds of food necessary for the support of even a modest population of large animals.
Other explanations for Sharlie have been advanced over the years. Some sightings may have been of sturgeon, fertilized eggs of which were apparently “planted” in Payette Lake in the 1920s (Jordan 1961, 151). Mangiacopra hypothesized that a small group of northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) might at one time have made their way from the Pacific Ocean up a series of rivers and established themselves in the lake, although he admitted several problems with this identification.
Sightings of Sharlie have decreased in recent decades, perhaps evidence of a population nearing extinction. However, stories about the creature recur often in McCall’s local and commercial literature, and Sharlie has been sculpted in ice for the town’s annual Winter Carnival.
Grove Koger
See also Champ; Chessie; Igopogo; Ogopogo; Whitey
Further Reading
Jordan, Grace Edgington. 1961. The King’s Pines of Idaho: A Story of the Browns of McCall. Portland: Binfords and Mort.
Koger, Grove. 2005. “Sharlie: The Myths and the Mystery.” McCall Magazine (Summer/Fall): 38–41.
Mangiacopra, Gary S. 1980. “Sharlie: A Preliminary Report of Possible Large Animals in the Payette Lakes of Idaho.” Of Sea and Shore 12 (1): 43–46.
McCallum, A. Boon. 1954. “‘Sharlie’ Is Name Selected for Famous McCall Serpent by Group of Judges.” Payette Lake Star, January 21.
“Slimy Slim in Idaho’s Payette Lake.” 1944. Time, August 21.