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Lake Erie’s Roadside Monster

June 24, 2008

For years, sailors on Lake Erie have reported seeing a long, thin creature swimming in its murky waters. Is it a prehistoric monster? A floating log? Leftover garbage from when the Cuyahoga River caught fire?

Len Tieman, who owns the lakeside Prehistoric Forest dinosaur park in Marblehead, Ohio, is squarely in the monster camp. His latest addition to his attraction is a home-built tribute to the monster, which the locals call “Lake Erie Bessie.”

“I built it like a sailboat. It has ballast in it,” he told us. Can he make Bessie submerge and surface to scare the scuppers off of local boaters? No, he answered, “but it is float-able. Eventually we’re gonna put it in the water.”

Len, who builds visually punchy dinosaurs, has given Bessie hot rod metallic blue skin and a mouth full of tiny teeth. She is clearly an improvement over the tribute to America’s other lake monster, and follows the trend of improved monster statues that we hope will continue.

Sections: Places, Statues 1 Comment »

One Response to “Lake Erie’s Roadside Monster”

1. Faith Says:
   June 24th, 2008 at 8:48 am

   That monster statue is great. I’m glad to see that people are still building old-fashioned attractions like that rather than the boring stone tombstone that stands in tribute to Champ.

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