by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
When it surfaced, it looked like the metal Monster from the Black Lagoon.
It smelled as bad as it looked.
But it’s no wonder, after having been on the bottom of Mayhew Lake for 15 years.
The smelly beast was, in fact, a pickup truck which had been reported stolen in March 2000.
The vehicle was pulled to the surface Jan. 15 by experts assigned by the Benton County Sheriff’s Department.
The long-lost truck was spotted by a fisherman who was ice-fishing on Mayhew Lake. The angler and someone else had placed a camera down through the ice in an attempt to locate fish, but what they saw instead, which stunned them, was a pickup truck. The clunker was not the lunker the anglers had in mind.
The fisherman then called the sheriff’s department. Deputies arrived at the scene and also used an underwater camera and sure enough: a pickup truck. It was submerged in 12 feet of water about 100 yards north of the public access and 25 yards from the west shore of the lake, the sheriff’s report stated.
The next day, Jan. 4, divers from the Stearns/Benton Dive Team searched the truck and the area surrounding it. The truck was empty, and there was no evidence in or around the vehicle. A vehicle-identification number showed the truck had been reported stolen 15 years earlier from an address in Graham Township in Benton County. The vehicle could not be removed from the lake Jan. 4 because the ice was too thin.
When it was removed, a large hole in the ice resulted, and so deputies marked the area with clearly visible barrier tape, warning any anglers or others to stay clear of the hole. The sheriff’s department is advising people to beware of that site as it will take many days before the ice becomes safely thick again.
Located seven miles from Rice in Benton County, Mayhew Lake is – technically anyway – a reservoir caused when the Mississippi River was dammed in 1911 downriver near Sartell, causing backed-up river water to flow into that area and also creating what is known as Little Rock Lake (a reservoir lake) just southeast of Rice.
Icicles form on parts of a truck after it was pulled from Mayhew Lake and placed in a storage lot.
The dashboard of a truck retrieved from Mayhew Lake resembles parts of the encrusted Titanic when it was filmed on the ocean floor. The truck was found recently, 15 years after it was reported missing from Graham Township in Benton County.
