Originally called Laguna Grande by early Spanish explorers, Lake Elsinore holds a storied place in regional history. It served as a vital rest stop where trappers, Gold Rush prospectors, and even famed explorer John Charles Frémont camped and watered their animals while passing through the area.
Lake Elsinore also carries a legacy of mystery, earning a reputation over the years as the possible home of a strange, elusive creature said to dwell beneath its surface. Local Native American tribes were the first to share tales of serpent-like beasts lurking in the waters, passing down stories of eerie sightings and unexplained phenomena surrounding the lake.
One early account from 1884 describes an enormous scaled creature with a long neck, which was called a sea serpent.
Another reported sighting occurred in 1934, when a rancher named C.B. Greenstreet claimed he was out on the lake with his wife and daughter when they witnessed a massive water creature. According to Greenstreet, the beast was around 100 feet long with a 30-foot tail, gliding slowly near the surface. The experience was so unsettling that his wife and daughter reportedly refused to return to the lake ever again.
In 1967, a family boating on the lake reported sighting the beast, which they described as being a huge dark, slender shape that rolled as it swam, and had humps that poked above the surface.
Then again in 1970, a witness named Bonne Play claimed to have seen the creature not just once, but twice. Play described it as roughly 12 feet long, with visible humps and a reptilian, almost dinosaur-like appearance.
Sightings continued into the 1990s, with a string of reports made in 1992.
It wasn’t long before the lake monster was being called “Elsie,” a reference to the better known Nessie, as well as “Hamlet,” due to the fact that the name Elsinore is taken from the name of a city that appears in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Interestingly, far from some isolated lake in the middle of untamed wilderness, Lake Elsinore is well visited, and situated in a highly populated area.
The lake has completely dried up three times in its history, yet no signs of a lake monster were ever found on the exposed lakebed. Locals who believe in the legend say the creature, known as Elsie, simply slithered off into a nearby cave to wait out the dry spells. Whatever the truth may be, it’s curious that a beast of such size—especially in a lake so heavily visited for recreation—isn’t spotted more often.
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