Okanagan Bridge Okanagan Lake This is my project on: Ogopogo Loch Ness Monster

Okanagan Lake Okanagan Lake is the largest in the region, running 120 km from Vernon to Penticton, and featuring a range of activities from parasailing to windsurfing, houseboating and fishing.

The surface area is 34,802 hectares (86,000 acres). The total volume is 63,712 cubic meters (21,250,000 acre feet). The mean annual outflow is 10,080 cubic meters (356,000 acre feet). The water residence or Renewal Time is 60 Years.

The average depth is AROUND 76 meters (250 feet). The maximum depth is AROUND 244 meters (800 feet).

Okanagan Lake Bridge

The Okanagan Lake Bridge was officially opened by H.R.H. Princess Margaret and Premier W.A.C. Bennett on July 19, Largest Floating Bridge in Canada. Stretching from Westbank to Kelowna, the overall length of structure from shore to shore is 7/8 of a mile. The lift span is 265 feet long and can be raised to provide 60 feet of vertical clearance.

The total construction time for the Okanagan bridge took 2 years. Each anchor weighs 70 tons, and is embedded 25 feet into the lake bottom. This bridge is the only structure of its kind in Canada, and one of the few of its kind in the world. It was a toll bridge up until April 1, 1963.

The Legendary Ogopogo

The name Ogopogo came from a music hall song popular in the 1920's. Ogopogo has been called a Demon Fish, Snake, Sea Serpent, Big Lake Devil, Oar Fish, Giant Sturgeon, That Thing, and by the Indians, N'Haatik.

Each year, sightings are reported of a creature some 20 to 50 feet long, with a horse shaped head and an undulating serpent like body.

People very close, between 50 and 100 feet, report seeing fins or feet on the animal.

One of the first reported sightings of Ogopogo came in the mid 1850's, when one John Mcdougall was supposedly crossing the lake with his two horses swimming behind him, attached to his canoe by ropes. Usually, Mcdougall honored the time old Indian custom and tossed a small animal or two in the water to appease whatever malevolent creature lived there, but this time he neglected to do so. As the story goes, something unseen began to pull the horses under and would have dragged the canoe down too, had Mcdougall not whipped out his knife and cut loose the horses and paddled for shore. Such reports were few and far between so the Okanagan monster was largely put down to native superstition. Since the 1920's the sightings have become more frequent but to this day no photographic evidence is out there to verify the existence of Ogopogo.

The Loch Ness

Loch Ness plunges to a depth of over 250m (750 feet) and the crushing pressure and pitch black water has made investigation by diving more or less impossible. Nevertheless, one or two submarines have paid a visit to the bottom but have failed to locate comprehensive proof of a large monster. Loch Ness is located in the North of Scotland. It is the largest freshwater lake in the Britain. It is twenty four miles long and a maximum of one and a half miles wide. Its maximum depth is around 750 feet and its average depth 450 feet. Because the waters are very cold, and also very cloudy it is difficult to see underwater more than a few feet. So there is a lot of murky water in which the loch ness monster could hide.

Said to have started with an account of Saint Columbia, in 565 A.D rescuing a swimmer from a lake creature. From then on stories of such a creature emerged periodically, but little is actually recorded until the 20th century. It was only after 1933, when a new road was built along the lake shore and people were first able to visit the area in large numbers, that reports of sightings really took off.

With a small head, long neck, big body with flippers and a tail. The Plesiosaurus, a relative of the dinosaur, has been thought to be extinct for some 65 million years.

The American Academy of Applied Science, funded a search by Dr Robert Rines, using sonar and automatic cameras. In 1972 one of their cameras photographed, in the murk, what appeared to be a flipper about 6 feet long on just four frames of film. Various sonar contacts followed, but it was not until 1975 that they got a vague, very blurred image of what might possibly have been the face.

By Travis Coles