Giant Snakes of Utah?

Some folks share their stories with Cryptomundo. Here’s one received this week, unedited for content. It appears to fall into the classification of “Giant Serpent Folklore.”

More than twelve years ago, an elderly Piute Indian lady and a male friend – both from Price, Utah – were chasing down a Piute story from the lady’s youth. The lady’s grandfather had said there was an undergound city, and gold mines, under the Henry Mountains in Utah, near the former site of what the grandfather described as the “Serpent Temple”. The grandfather had a hand drawn picture of the entrance to the temple – showing giant snakes carved in rock. He claimed the picture was from his family and the temple had been destroyed and buried to hide the site. To shorten the story substantially, in their searches of the mountain, the male claims to have been watching some cattle at a spring near the site and suddenly saw a monstrous snake strike a small under 1 year old calf of say 150+ lbs in size. He estimated the snake to be over 35ft in length. He claimed it knocked the calf over and quickly wrapped around it and he watched fascinated and terrified as it took a rather long period of time to engulf the calf.

Ultimately he claimed to have seen it and other of similar size multiple times, and went so far as to ask the local rancher if he had been losing any calves. The rancher replied rustlers were apparently taking 10 or 12 a year in the area.

The lady claims she was sitting on rock beside the dirt road one day and one came out from a hole in a pile rocks nearby. Terrified, she remained frozen as it raised up to her face height and somewhat opened its mouth so close that she could even smell how foul its breath was. Oddly, the lady, who said she used to capture and eat snakes (especially rattlesnakes) routinely in the mountains in her youth, claimed the snake was like nothing she’d ever seen. She described it’s skin as being leathery, rather than having the scales she was used to seeing. Furthermore its head (“bigger than my head”), had some kind of dorsal ridge down it. After a long moment, it lowered its head and crossed the road at a diagonal, disappearing down the hill on the other side. The tail apparently was on one side of the road as the head reached the other. The lady and the guy claim to have measured the distance at well over 28ft.

I’ve visited the site. No skins, no massive snake scat to be seen. The couple however remained insistent in their stories. They claimed the snakes lived inside the tunnels in the mountain where the temperatures are constant, with plenty of water since the springs came from there. The Piute claims the snakes where put there to protect the site which incidently is also supposed to contain a chamber with wall lined with gold or gold tablets upon which the history of mankind is written.

If the “snakes” were put there, how come they didn’t spread out? Oddly, that might be the easiest part. The Henry Mountains are literally an oasis in the desert, with water, large numbers of deer and one of the largest buffalo herds in the country. But the area around the mountains is rather inhospitable. It would likely be difficult for a cold-blooded creature (or is it cold blooded?) to travel far.

It’s a fun story. Is it true? I believe the Piute lady is dead now. She and her companion stuck to their story over the several years I talked with them. They said they wanted to prove their story to others.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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