A Sea Monster in the Cannon River?

If you haven’t heard about the sea monster in Lake Pepin, it isn’t due to a lack of effort by Lake City entrepreneur and promoter, Larry Nielson. The world has discovered this phenomenon too.

Larry spoke at the recent 2nd Annual Goodhue County EDA Summit, organized by the Southeastern Minnesota Development Corporation, held in Zumbrota. The forum brought together public officials, professionals and the public to discuss economic development opportunities in the county.
Some of the topics covered included transportation upgrades, federal stimulus projects, trails, Elk Run project, cross-marketing businesses and towns and tourism.

Come visit!

Attracting more people to an area may be more effectively done as a group rather than individually. But this might mean working cooperatively with neighboring towns... (the rivals you competed against as a kid in school sports or when you were an adult thought they were taking business away from your town).

Larry is also president of Mississipi Valley Partners which promotes a group of 17 towns to bring visitors to their area. It has become a boost for lodging and eating facilities, specialty shops, etc.

Tourism is about an $11 billion industry in Minnesota. Agriculture is around the same. Larry explained, there are about 3 1/2 million people in the metropolitan area. And about 500,000 visit the Mayo Clinic each year. This latter number does not include whoever accompanies them to the clinic. So you have a large supply of potential visitors to this area.

So how did Larry get people from around

the world to visit Lake Pepin?

One afternoon in April 2008, Larry got to thinking about the similarities of Lake Pepin to Scotland’s Loch Ness that he had seen on a TV program. That lake has about the same size and geography as Pepin. Loch Ness is famous for a creature they have named, Nessie.

Our very own Sea Monster?

Then Larry recalled a news article reporting a similar sighting in Lake Pepin back in 1871. The Wabasha County Sentinal reported that “Giles Hyde and C. Page Bonney, report having seen some sort of sea monster, on Monday last, in the lake, between this and Stockholm. It was the size of an elephant and rhinoceros, and moved through the water with great rapidity. It is understood now, since they have told the story, that the same thing whatever it may be, has been seen on one or two other occasions. The water in the lake is known to be very deep, whales might live in - but this is not likely to be a whale, the question is, what is it?”

Larry mulled over this information and a couple of hours later he had the beginnings of an idea that would get world-wide attention. Maybe there really was a huge sea creature in Lake Pepin! The creature, to be named Pepie, was “shy, gentle and playful”.

A web site was created and then a reward of $50,000 was offered if anyone could prove the existence of the creature!

Could the Sea Monster have offspring?

So I got to thinking... what if Pepie had offspring? Maybe: “Pepie’s Pups”. And what if they got to frolicking “in the autumn mist”? (I’m from the Puff the Magic Dragon era.) And these "Pups" frolicked out of Lake Pepin and the Mississippi River into a tributary, the Cannon River? And then headed upstream until they got to Cannon Falls?

It was only a couple of years ago I saw what seemed to be a partially submerged log in the Little Cannon River which flows into the Cannon River. But it also looked like those sea monsters I’ve seen pictured.

So I took a picture and when I put it on my computer it seemed to “morph” into a really sweet sea creature in hiding! And with a little touch of my photo program tools, it came to “life”! And now I smile whenever I walk along the river and see a glimpse of it amongst the tall grass.

So maybe folks from around the world

will also like to visit Cannon Falls

and hunt for “Pepie’s Pups”!

And enjoy the beauty and opportunities

that wait for them here.

.