Writing a decade ago on the Bigfoot phenomenon, the ecologist Robert Michael Pyle mused, “I think of Bigfoot as an emblem of the Pacific Northwest, standing for the residents' earnest and whimsical frontier curiosity, for their eagerness to grasp the essence of the land and its life.” Bigfoot is not alone among unusual -- or even quite ordinary -- American fauna in summing up whole regions in the public imagination. But while animals have long served symbolic roles in American cultural and political life, monsters have enjoyed that role and something more. Because of their extraordinary natures and the peculiar trends of American life, monsters -- while tenuously zoological and scientific -- exist primarily as symbols and, as a close second, as celebrities. Dwelling fundamentally in the imagination, Bigfoot, Thunderbirds, or even more local creatures like South Carolina's Lizard Man, demonstrate Americans' confused exuberance for naturalism, sensationalism, and ultimately capitalism. When monsters become associated with specific regions, as with Bigfoot, those “isms” become intertwined fundamentally with geography. When we think of Bigfoot, what do we see first with our mind's eye: the half-glimpsed hairy form conjured up by vague reports from loggers, or a vista of trees, mountains, misty air?

As a symbol of the West, Bigfoot has been particularly powerful, probably because we have a clear sense in our own minds, no doubt pre-fabricated, of what the Pacific Northwest ought to look like. But what of the East? Historical literature dealing with regional identity has largely focused on the West, perhaps because of the powerful hold the frontier has had in the American mind since Turner. This dissertation redresses the geographical imbalance by examining the role of an unknown snake-like animal - dubbed the “Chesapeake Bay Phenomenon” by scientists for the waterway it preferred - in defining Maryland identity in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. “Chessie,” as the creature was known colloquially, first appeared in the lower Potomac River in August 1978, before migrating gradually eastward into the Chesapeake Bay. By the 1980s, the “monster” and reports of its sightings - which generally began with the official opening of summer on Memorial Day and lasted through mid-autumn -- had become fixtures of Maryland life. Although the “unknown” Chessie vanished in the latter 1980s, the creature was replaced in the following decade by a migratory bull manatee that scientists concluded had been the monster all along. Whatever the nature of the beast, however, Chessie's meanderings - and their use by public figures - provide unusual perspective both on Maryland and mid-Atlantic politics and culture from 1970 to 1995. While largely unknown outside of Maryland and barely remembered by most Marylanders today, the search for Chessie illustrates some of the most profound changes sweeping the state and the nation in the period spanning the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton: the growth of the environmental movement, construction and commodification of state identity through commercialization of natural resources, and the proliferation of tourism and environmentalism by governments for the benefit of the post-industrial middle class.

South Carolina Colonial Dames Scholarship, 2003