Whatever happened to Harold A. Dahl of the 1947 Maury Island Incident?
For fun I decided to attempt to track down the main guy and his family who disappeared during the Maury Island Incident, using entirely public records — 75 years later. For more information you can watch this film, this documentary, read Washington State Senate Resolution 8648 or watch them adopt it on YouTube.
The WA State Senate’s resolution states the FBI sealed their conclusions about this case for 50 years (why?), along with this statement: “Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted an investigation of the deaths of Davidson and Brown and ultimately concluded that Dahl did not recant his story but that his claim of hoax was itself a fabrication to avoid further public attention and ridicule” (emphases added).
We know his full name was Harold A. Dahl (not just “Harold Dahl”) according to Kenneth Arnold’s “Fate” magazine article:
We know according to several articles that he was either a “lumber scavenger” or a “harbor patrolman”. He had a 15 year old son named Charles in 1947, lived in Tacoma, WA, and he was married but with an unknown wife’s name. (I would love to know if his wife’s name appeared in print anywhere, but I wasn’t able to find it.) This is just enough information (barely) to find a candidate family in the public records.
He and his family completely bolted from town abruptly around Aug. 1947, apparently in terror, and were never heard from again. The literature in the following decades contained many speculations about what happened to him and his family.
It’s implausible that a man with a wife and one or more children could completely disappear from the public records without leaving a trace. After some searching on newspapers.com and ancestry.com, I found a family that so far fits the known facts:
Note after I wrote this article, I received the book “Maury Island UFO Incident” by LeFevre and Lipson. These authors also found the same person. They have his birth date as Aug. 15, 1911 and he originally spelled his last name as “Doll” (which confused my public records search):
A birth date of 1911 would make him 36 in 1947. Here’s his obituary printed on Feb. 1, 1982, which was crucial to finding him:
He resided in Tacoma and the general area, had a son named Charles, was known as a “trader” (similar enough to a “scavenger”), and had children so he was probably married. Here’s his public tree (requires an ancestry.com subscription to view), all from public records:
Note I guessed at the birth locations for his children (more public records are needed). Here they are in the 1950 census:
The 1947 City Directory for Tacoma, WA lists a “Harold A (Helen)” living on N Gove St., which is a street fairly close to the water. Kenneth Arnold said he looked up Harold in the phone book to get his number, and this could be the same one:
The street seems comfortably close enough to the water for someone who worked on a boat:
Here’s his family tree. Most people here are probably deceased. I’m not able to find much information about them, although I did see some 1950’s Medford OR yearbook photos for one of his children, so I’m certain they lived there for a time:
I haven’t found any marriage records yet, but I did find a 1978 divorce record.
Importantly, sometime between 1947 and 1950 the Dahls moved almost as far south in Oregon as you can get without going to California, to Medford OR (a 7 hour 5 minute drive today — or one day’s drive):
Harold was a somewhat enterprising guy, and in the 1950 time period he paid for numerous small classified newspaper listings offering to buy furniture and scraps:
Eventually he incorporated and expanded the business with family helping out:
The name “Jacqueline Tonn” appears in his 1950 census records (although slightly misspelled, which is forgivable), along with the other family member names (but not Charles — he was 18 in 1950 and apparently left home), so I’m positive this is the right person. His 1950 census record also lists Jacqueline and Harold working in the furniture business.
His scrap and furniture business advertisements then got more elaborate in the late 1950:
After looking up the address in this advertisement (232 North Riverside), this Medford OR classified appeared a few days later, so perhaps the sale was a success:
This business stopped operating at this location sometime on/before 1954. The next record in 1978 lists his divorce in Thurston County, WA — the county right next to Pierce County (Tacoma’s county).
Finally we get to Harold Albert “Trader Dahl” Doll Dahl’s gravestone, which matches these public records:
