Charles Gartner and his sons Joe and Jack visited friends in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, in June 1926. On their way home along the National Pike, they decided to stop for some fishing in the Casselman River near Grantsville.
Imagine their surprise when their catch included a waterdog, an alligator and a hellbender.
“They returned home in the evening with a good catch of fish, 163 being the number caught, to say nothing of three hellbenders, commonly called waterdogs or alligators, which were also included in their catch,” according to the Meyersdale Republican.
Although all are names for the same creature, since the Gartners caught three of them, you can say they caught each.
The hellbender’s taxonomic name is Cryptobranchus alleganiensis. They are a type of salamander that can grow to 30 inches long. It typically is gray-brown, and sometimes, it has dark blotches. They feed on crayfish, earthworms, mollusks and insect larvae.
“The hellbender closely resembles the Gila Monster, and is one of the ugliest reptiles on earth,” the Meyersdale Republican reported.
But not many people have seen them in the state because they are nocturnal and live under large flat rocks or submerged logs.
Because they are so unusual and rare, when someone finds one, people tend to hear about it because they make quite the impression.
“The biggest hellbender was caught on Master Joe’s hook, which so frightened the boy when it was pulled to shore that he took to his heels,” the Meyersdale Republican reported.
And that is often the reaction to them, especially the larger ones.
In 1999, Times-News columnist Ken Hodgdon still remembered the first time he saw a hellbender nearly half a century before when he was a biology teacher at Valley High School. A student brought one to class. The student said he had caught the hellbender while fishing and using a crayfish as bait. He kept it in his aquarium overnight and then brought it to school to show his teacher. Hodgdon identified it, but then he had the student return it to the Casselman River.
“These two water animals (hellbenders and mud puppies) take you way back in time, as they seem to be like prehistoric creatures, almost like dinosaurs,” Hodgdon wrote.
They are long-lived. Even in captivity, hellbenders have lived 55 years.
“In Maryland, it is reported from the Susquehanna River and its tributaries and from the lower Casselman and Youghiogheny rivers in Garrett County,” according to the Cumberland Times-News.
Their big enemies are impoundments, silt and, not too surprising, pollution. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources considers the hellbender an endangered species.
In the 1980s, J. Edward Gates, an associate professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Maryland’s Appalachian Environmental Laboratory Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies in Frostburg was researching the hellbender to see if it could be helped to thrive once again and “aid the Maryland DNR in their task of better managing the wildlife resources of the state,” according to the Cumberland Times-News.
So, if you are near a river and see a small sea monster creeping along the river bottom, you aren’t imagining it. You’re seeing a hellbender or “Alligator of the Alleghenies.”