The leaves have fallen, which signals the return of the Illahee Sea Monster. Each time I drive by, I have more and more questions. First of all, did I really just see a sea monster?! What is that? How did it get there? Who made it?

Join me on my quest to discover the origin of Bremerton’s Nessie, Which led me through decades of environmental lawsuits and drama that nearly split the Illahee community in two before leading me to the name I was looking for - Meredith Jones.

Here’s the Illahee Sea Monster, in case you’ve never seen her:

Slightly Terrifying. She’s difficult to find photos of because the beach down there is private and covered with cameras. I think this gives a good sense of scale. That man is Meredith Jones, her creator. I’ve also dropped a pin on google maps, it’s a rough approximation.

The most recent photo I could find of Nessie is the one above, which I pulled down from Reddit. Taken by U/pastoriagym 3 years ago. Nessie’s getting on in age a little, she’s close to 30 years old and I haven’t seen any reference to maintenance or restoration over the years.

Stone Intarsia

Here are some photos of Meredith’s Stone Intarsia works. These were difficult to find and I had to pull them off of a website called “Masters of Stone” through the Wayback Machine. As a result, they are all low resolution with the exception of the Lapidary Journal.

Meredith’s “Marsh Hawk” was featured as the cover for the August 1964 issue of Lapidary Journal, which I found of copy of on Ebay. Sadly, the inside cover informed they bumped the article about the piece out of the issue and I haven’t figured out what issue the article ended up. The magazine has now been defunct for years. I contacted the only archive I could find online and made a request but have not heard back.

If anyone has better pictures or a copy of the magazine with the article in it, I’d love to know about it! It’s hard to appreciate the detail in these works with such low res photos.

And now, for the old newspaper articles! You can see Meredith a little better in these. Most of these come from the Illahee mansion controversy but I’ve also included a handful about his involvement with the Kitsap Gem and Mineral society. I also snuck in one of his wife, Almira!

Meredith Jones passed away in 2007, at the ripe old age of 95. His family and friends are the keepers of his creations to this day (at least, the ones that aren’t permanently installed on a beach). Thank you for the intriguing gift you left the Illahee community, Meredith. I hope the sea monster continues to swim for another 30 years.

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