A June, 1932 article by D.N. Ellis in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, written in response to an earlier story about a 3-foot alligator in the Bosque River, noted that heavy rains probably brought the alligator upstream. The article noted that alligators were more common in the early days of Erath settlement and that in the 1870s a 9-foot alligator was killed in the Bosque. [There are earlier stories about alligators killed in the river, which included an 11-foot creature at the junction of Green Creek and the Bosque. Early immigrants noted that the alligators were eating their dogs as they drank from the river. The series of dams built on the Bosque at Waco finally stopped the upriver migrations].