Although reported in the press as a "monster", it is reported to be deeply loved by neighborhood residents near this portion of the White River, and the monster is referred to locally as "Whitey".

The first officially recorded sighting however was in December of 1912, an Arkansas newspaper reported that timber workers floating rafts of cedar on the White River below Branson, Missouri, had seen something large and strange on the bottom.

It is worth noting that Bateman’s description was very similar to the one reported around the world four years earlier during the first major blast of coverage of Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster. It should also be noted that Newport and much of the White River Valley had been devastated by one of the worst floods in Arkansas history earlier in 1937.