The Altamaha-ha

A river monster the Muscogee knew about first

Georgia’s river monster, and the story is older than the tourism. The Muscogee carried accounts of a big thing in the water long before Darien had a name, and sightings still cluster where the Altamaha runs out into the marsh. Two honest explanations are on the record: an alligator gar, which grows long and armoured and looks wrong at the surface, covers most of it. And the carcass that washed up at Wolf Island in 2018 and made the news was a performance artist ’s work, a stuffed shark and papier-mâché, which they later admitted. The river is worth the trip either way: it drains a quarter of Georgia and almost nobody paddles it.