Long before there were cryptids, there was the Thunderbird. In the traditions of many Native peoples of North America — above all in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes region — the Thunderbird is a vast, powerful being whose wings make thunder and whose eyes flash lightning. It is a spirit, a guardian, and a force of nature, not an animal to be catalogued.
Then, in the nineteenth century, the legend crossed into the newspapers — and became something else: a flesh-and-blood creature that could be shot, measured, and photographed. The story that followed has everything a mystery needs, except proof.
The Tombstone Thunderbird
The most famous Thunderbird report dates to 26 April 1890, when the Tombstone Epitaph of Arizona published an account of two ranchers who had killed a “winged monster” in the desert between the Whetstone and Huachuca mountains. The creature, the paper said, had a wingspan of about 160 feet, a body more than 92 feet long, smooth skin rather than feathers, and features reminiscent of an alligator.
The article had no photograph. That has not stopped generations of people from remembering one. The image everyone pictures — cowboys standing beside an enormous bird nailed to the side of a barn — is one of cryptozoology’s most persistent false memories. The claim that the Epitaph published such a photograph seems to trace to a 1963 article by Jack Pearl in the men’s adventure magazine Saga, which asserted that the paper had printed a photo in 1886. The date and the detail do not survive scrutiny: no copy of such a photograph has ever been found, and exhaustive searches of the Epitaph‘s archives have turned up the article, but no image.
The photograph is now recognised as a classic case of communal false memory — a sepia-toned image that many people are certain they have seen, and that never existed. Later hoaxes, digitally altered barn pictures, and confusion with a widely reproduced photograph of a marabou stork have kept the image alive.
There is a coda. In 1970, a man named Harry McClure claimed he had known one of the cowboys as a boy, and that the real story was smaller: a wingspan of 20 to 30 feet, and the creature not killed at all — only shot at. Even that version has no corroboration.
The Lawndale incident
The most discussed modern case came on the evening of 25 July 1977, in Lawndale, Illinois, a small town in Logan County. Ten-year-old Marlon Lowe was playing in his family’s yard near Kickapoo Creek with other children, when — according to seven witnesses — two enormous dark birds swooped low over the property.
One of the birds, the accounts say, seized Marlon by the straps of his sleeveless shirt and lifted him about two feet off the ground, carrying him some 35 feet across the yard before dropping him as his mother, Ruth Lowe, ran at it, screaming. Marlon was shaken, with minor scratches, but otherwise unharmed.
The birds were described as jet-black, with white rings around their necks, long curved beaks, and wingspans of eight to ten feet. The story was reported in the Boston Evening Globe on 28 July 1977, and it drew intense media attention — and intense scepticism.
The scepticism is grounded in biology. No known bird in North America could lift a child off the ground, even briefly. The largest flying bird on the continent, the California condor, has a wingspan of about nine and a half feet but weighs only around 23 pounds — far too light to generate the lift needed for a 65- to 70-pound child. Even eagles struggle to carry more than a few pounds. The traditional suspects — turkey vultures, wayward condors — are far too small and too weak.
The Lowe family never profited from the story. They received ridicule rather than fame, and they stuck to their account.
The real giants
Giant birds were once real. The teratorns — a family of enormous extinct birds of prey — had wingspans reaching seventeen feet, and they flew over North America until roughly 10,000 years ago. Their existence proves that the continent once supported birds of Thunderbird scale. It does not prove that any survived: teratorns left bones, nests, and fossils. No Thunderbird has left a feather, a bone, or a carcass.
What the evidence says
- Documented: The Thunderbird is a figure in the traditions of many Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes, a being whose wings make thunder and whose eyes flash lightning.
- Documented: On 26 April 1890, the Tombstone Epitaph reported that two ranchers had killed a “winged monster” between the Whetstone and Huachuca mountains, with a reported wingspan of about 160 feet and smooth, featherless skin. The article had no photograph.
- Disputed: The famous “barn photograph” of the Tombstone Thunderbird never existed; the claim traces to a 1963 Saga magazine article by Jack Pearl, and no original image has ever been found. It is a documented case of communal false memory.
- Documented: On 25 July 1977, in Lawndale, Illinois, seven witnesses reported that two huge black birds, with wingspans of eight to ten feet, swooped over a yard, and that one lifted ten-year-old Marlon Lowe about two feet off the ground and carried him some 35 feet before dropping him. The story was reported in the Boston Evening Globe on 28 July 1977.
- Proposed explanations: Turkey vultures, condors, or misidentification — none of which can account for the reported size and lifting strength. The California condor, North America’s largest flying bird, weighs only about 23 pounds.
What remains unknown
No bones, feathers, nests, or clear footage of a Thunderbird have ever been found. The Tombstone photograph is a false memory, and the Lawndale account, though supported by seven witnesses, describes a feat no known bird can perform. The Thunderbird remains what it began as: a powerful story, told for centuries, waiting for evidence that has never arrived.