Thunderbird · Alton, Illinois · 1673
IL-1673ID case-4414d8c419Added to map Oct 6, 2026
- Creature
- Thunderbird
- When
- 1673to the year
- Where
- Alton, Illinoisto town level
- Reports
- 1 document1 independent
The account
Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette stumbled upon a degraded mural of a bird-like dragon with scales, wings, and horns.
See the source ↓ one document so far, so there is no trail to follow yet
We map claims, not creatures: this is what the sources say, not proof. How a case is built
Details
- Creature
- Thunderbird
- Where
- Alton, Madison County, Illinois, 62002, United States
mapped to town level · from the report's own words - When
- 1673
- Account
- Not first-hand (retold or reported by someone else)
- Backed by
- 1 independent source
- Added to map
- Oct 6, 2026
- Case id
- case-4414d8c419
Place lookups use data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via Nominatim. All credits
Source trail (1)
Every link goes to where we found the account. The earliest we found is marked; it is the earliest found, not necessarily the original.
- 1948 'Monster Bird' Sighting | Project Blue Book Investigates Thunderbird Account
YouTube
Earliest found, not necessarily the original.
Further reading
- On the Track of Unknown Animals, Bernard Heuvelmans (1959)
The founding work of cryptozoology.
Borrow on Internet Archive - Cryptozoology A to Z, Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark (1999)
Encyclopedia of reported creatures.
Borrow on Internet Archive - Abominable Science!, Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero (2013)
Skeptical history of the Yeti, Nessie and others.
Borrow on Internet Archive - In Search of Prehistoric Survivors, Karl Shuker (1995)
Borrow on Internet Archive
Books we have not reproduced: borrow them free at archive.org. Listing a book is not an endorsement of its claims.