Within Wyoming Monsters
How Did Douglas Sell the Jackalope?
The jackalope began as a taxidermy joke in Douglas and became Wyoming's most recognisable monster emblem.
On this page
- The Herrick brothers' taxidermy gag
- Tourist licences, statues and souvenirs
- Why the joke still feels oddly plausible
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Introduction
Douglas, Wyoming, sold the jackalope by doing something cleverer than pretending a horned rabbit was real. It made the joke public, repeatable and local. The familiar creature — a jackrabbit with antlers or pronghorn-like horns — began as a taxidermy gag associated with the Herrick brothers in the 1930s, then moved into hotel-bar display, tourist licences, statues, souvenirs, town branding and state-symbol debates. That makes the Douglas jackalope less a hidden animal claim than a model case in Western identity: a hoax everyone can recognise, enjoy and still half-perform. Its power comes from the exact place where Wyoming myth-making often lives — between real wildlife, frontier humour, roadside commerce and the pleasure of telling visitors that the impossible might just be native to the sagebrush.[cityofdouglas.org]cityofdouglas.orgCity of Douglas The Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WYCity of DouglasThe Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WY - Official WebsiteRalph Herrick, a taxidermist here, admits, somewhat reluctantl…
The Herrick brothers’ taxidermy gag
The Douglas jackalope story usually begins in a taxidermy shop, not in a remote canyon or around a frightened eyewitness. The City of Douglas’s own legend page credits Ralph and Doug Herrick with creating the creature in 1934 after a dead rabbit and a pair of antlers happened to lie together in their shop. Ralph Herrick’s remembered line — that Doug suggested mounting it “the way it is” — is exactly the sort of origin story a good comic monster needs: accidental, visual and just plausible enough to become retellable.[City of Douglas]cityofdouglas.orgCity of Douglas The Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WYCity of DouglasThe Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WY - Official WebsiteRalph Herrick, a taxidermist here, admits, somewhat reluctantl…
Other accounts vary slightly on the year, often placing the first mount in 1932 or more broadly in the Great Depression, but the core story remains stable: two young Wyoming taxidermists combined a jackrabbit with antlers and turned a visual joke into a sellable object. The Scientist, drawing on Michael P. Branch’s research, says the first hoax mount was sold for $10 to a local entrepreneur who displayed it above a hotel bar in Douglas, where it became a talking point. The Wyoming State Archives’ “Wyoming Postscripts” account also ties the early display to Douglas’s LaBonte Hotel and notes that the creature became the town’s official symbol.[The Scientist]the-scientist.comon the trail of the jackalope 69653The ScientistOn the Trail of the Jackalope | The Scientist13 Feb 2022 — The first jackalope hoax mount was created during the Great Depre…
That hotel-bar detail matters because it explains how the jackalope escaped the workshop. A private taxidermy joke could have vanished with one laugh. A mounted “specimen” in a public room, by contrast, invited questions from travellers, salesmanship from locals and repetition from anyone who enjoyed fooling the next person through the door. In cryptid terms, Douglas did not produce a sighting flap. It produced a prop, a setting and a script.
How Douglas turned a fake animal into a town emblem
Douglas’s genius was not merely inventing a jackalope; it was keeping the creature socially useful. The town’s official materials now treat the jackalope as a civic mascot. Douglas says the creature appears on the city seal and logo, and its “Meet Jack” page points visitors to statues in Jackalope Square, the Visitors Center and a large hillside cutout visible near Interstate 25.[Douglas, WY]wy-douglas.civicplus.comDouglas, WYMeet Jack | Douglas, WY - Official Website - CivicPlusThe jackalope is the prominent feature on the City seal and logo, which…
The joke also became portable through licences and souvenirs. Douglas and Converse County tourism material describe jackalope hunting licences as a tourist tradition, with hunting allowed only on the impossible date of June 31, usually between midnight and 2 a.m., and with mock restrictions on the hunter’s intelligence. The official Douglas page leans into the same rules, warning that licences are issued only to those with a demonstrable IQ below 72 and that “jackalope milk” may be obtained at the Visitors Center.[City of Douglas]cityofdouglas.orgCity of Douglas Meet Jack | Douglas, WYCity of Douglas Meet Jack | Douglas, WY
These details are not incidental fluff. They are the machinery of the legend. A tourist licence lets the visitor buy into the story without needing to believe it. A statue gives the creature a photographable body. A city logo turns the hoax into a badge of local confidence. A fake hunting season makes the absurdity legally shaped, which is especially funny in a state where hunting, wildlife management and outdoor identity are part of the public landscape.
The wider state has repeatedly treated the jackalope as almost official folklore. A 2015 Wyoming House Bill proposed declaring the jackalope the state legendary critter, describing it as a jackrabbit with either deer antlers or pronghorns and identifying it as “first sighted and native to Douglas, Wyoming”. The bill did not need to create the legend; its value is that it shows how far the joke had travelled from a mounted rabbit to a state-level cultural symbol.[Wyoming Legislature]wyoleg.govOpen source on wyoleg.gov.
Why the joke still feels oddly plausible
The jackalope works because it is silly in exactly the right Western way. Wyoming really does have jackrabbits, antlered and horned ungulates, taxidermy traditions, hunting culture, roadside gift shops and vast open country where a traveller can imagine odd animals flickering at the edge of sight. The creature is impossible as described, but the ingredients are local and familiar.
There is also a real biological echo behind the horned-rabbit idea. Shope papillomavirus, first described in cottontail rabbits in the 1930s, can cause large horn-like tumours on rabbits. A 2015 paper on museum rabbit specimens notes that Sylvilagus floridanus papillomavirus causes such growths, and The Scientist explains that Richard Shope’s work on these “horns” documented the first virus-induced cancer in a mammal. These are not antlers, and they do not prove that jackalopes exist, but they help explain why horned-rabbit stories can feel less random than a purely invented monster.[PMC]pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govPMCA Century of Shope Papillomavirus in Museum RabbitPMCA Century of Shope Papillomavirus in Museum Rabbit
That is important for a sceptical reading of the legend. The Douglas jackalope is a known taxidermy hoax, not an unresolved zoological case. Yet it borrows credibility from the natural world: rabbits can develop strange growths, antlers can be mounted, and taxidermy can make a hybrid look museum-like at a glance. The joke succeeds because it sits close enough to reality to make disbelief enjoyable.
A Western monster built for visitors
Many cryptid stories ask the reader to choose between belief and debunking. The jackalope is more interesting because the “debunking” is part of the tradition. Douglas residents and promoters have long understood that the creature is a hoax, but the town’s performance invites visitors to play along anyway. The City of Douglas legend page even says that two favourite local sports are convincing gullible tourists that the jackalope exists and reinforcing the beliefs of those who already think so.[City of Douglas]cityofdouglas.orgCity of Douglas The Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WYCity of DouglasThe Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WY - Official WebsiteRalph Herrick, a taxidermist here, admits, somewhat reluctantl…
That makes the jackalope a roadside creature as much as a folklore creature. It belongs with souvenir postcards, mounted heads, exaggerated hunting rules and “world’s largest” attractions. The Center for Land Use Interpretation notes that Douglas claims the birthplace of the jackalope through downtown sculpture and annual permits, while High Country News described the creature’s image as appearing across local public life after Wyoming Governor Ed Herschler declared Douglas the official home of the jackalope in 1985.[Center for Land Use Interpretation]clui.orgOpen source on clui.org.
This is Western identity with a wink. The jackalope lets Douglas claim distinctiveness without solemnity. It says the town knows its own story is absurd and also knows absurd stories can be economically and emotionally useful. For travellers, the reward is not a genuine animal encounter but participation in a local joke that has been kept alive for generations.
Hoax, folklore or cryptid?
The Douglas jackalope sits at an awkward but productive edge of cryptid culture. It is not a cryptid in the strict sense of an animal seriously proposed as undiscovered or scientifically unverified. The evidence does not point to a hidden breeding population of antlered rabbits; it points to taxidermy, tourism and deliberate comic invention.[City of Douglas]cityofdouglas.orgCity of Douglas The Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WYCity of DouglasThe Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WY - Official WebsiteRalph Herrick, a taxidermist here, admits, somewhat reluctantl…
Yet the jackalope still belongs in Wyoming’s mystery-beast tradition because it shows how monster culture actually works at ground level. Not every famous creature legend grows from fear, misidentification or unresolved testimony. Some grow from hoaxes that become too beloved to discard. In that sense, Douglas gives Wyoming a rare kind of state monster: one whose falseness is not a weakness but the source of its charm.
A useful way to read the jackalope is to separate three layers:
The physical “evidence” is manufactured. The classic jackalope mount is a taxidermy hybrid, generally a rabbit body or head fitted with antlers or horns.
The local tradition is real. Douglas’s statues, licences, branding and visitor rituals are documented civic practices, not vague rumours.[Douglas, WY]wy-douglas.civicplus.comDouglas, WYMeet Jack | Douglas, WY - Official Website - CivicPlusThe jackalope is the prominent feature on the City seal and logo, which…
The biological resemblance has a real-world explanation. Shope papillomavirus can produce horn-like growths in rabbits, but those growths are disease effects, not antlers and not a separate species.[PMC]pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govPMCA Century of Shope Papillomavirus in Museum RabbitPMCA Century of Shope Papillomavirus in Museum Rabbit
That layered reading lets the story stay fun without making false claims. The jackalope is not “real” as an animal, but it is very real as a Wyoming cultural object.
Why Douglas’s jackalope became Wyoming’s comic monster
The jackalope endured because it solved several identity problems at once. It gave Douglas a memorable attraction. It gave Wyoming a light-hearted creature emblem that fitted hunting, open-country humour and frontier exaggeration. It gave souvenir culture a instantly readable image. And it gave sceptical readers something unusual: a monster story where the hoax is not a scandal but the point.
The legend also avoids the heaviness that surrounds many mystery-beast traditions. Bigfoot reports ask questions about tracks, witnesses, forest cover and misidentification. Lake monsters raise questions about water, folklore and ecology. The jackalope asks a more playful question: what happens when a community openly adopts a fake creature because the fake creature tells a true story about local humour?
Douglas’s answer has lasted because the town never had to choose between truth and performance. It can admit the Herrick brothers’ taxidermy gag, sell a hunting licence for a non-existent date, put the animal on public signs, and still call itself the Home of the Jackalope with a straight face. That is the heart of the legend. The jackalope is Wyoming’s most recognisable monster emblem not because people proved it was hiding in the brush, but because Douglas proved a good hoax can become a durable form of place-making.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: the-scientist.com
Title: on the trail of the jackalope 69653
Link:https://www.the-scientist.com/on-the-trail-of-the-jackalope-69653
Source snippet
The ScientistOn the Trail of the Jackalope | The Scientist13 Feb 2022 — The first jackalope hoax mount was created during the Great Depre...
2.
Source: wy-douglas.civicplus.com
Link:https://wy-douglas.civicplus.com/235/Meet-Jack
Source snippet
Douglas, WYMeet Jack | Douglas, WY - Official Website - CivicPlusThe jackalope is the prominent feature on the City seal and logo, which...
3.
Source: ncifrederick.cancer.gov
Link:https://ncifrederick.cancer.gov/about/theposter/content/nci-frederick-authors-and-collaborators-map-full-transcriptome-of-cottontail-rabbit-papillomavirus
4.
Source: youtube.com
Title: The Jackalope: An American Frontier Legend | Wild West Documentary
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cVHavm8NLI
Source snippet
JACKALOPE - WikiVidi Documentary...
5.
Source: youtube.com
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIPkUospl94
Source snippet
Douglas, Wyoming: The Jackalope Capital of the World...
6.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Douglas, Wyoming: The Jackalope Capital of the World
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4eIlHoF9f8
7.
Source: cityofdouglas.org
Title: City of Douglas The Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WY
Link:https://www.cityofdouglas.org/255/The-Legend-of-the-Jackalope
Source snippet
City of DouglasThe Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WY - Official WebsiteRalph Herrick, a taxidermist here, admits, somewhat reluctantl...
8.
Source: wyoleg.gov
Link:https://wyoleg.gov/2015/bills/HB0066.pdf
Source snippet
Wyoming LegislatureSTATE OF WYOMINGDouglas, Wyoming is the state legendary critter of Wyoming. 13. 14. Page 2. 2015. STATE OF WYOMING. 15...
9.
Source: cityofdouglas.org
Title: City of Douglas Meet Jack | Douglas, WY
Link:https://www.cityofdouglas.org/235/Meet-Jack
10.
Source: wyoleg.gov
Link:https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2015/HB0066
11.
Source: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Title: PMCA Century of Shope Papillomavirus in Museum Rabbit
Link:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4493010/
12.
Source: clui.org
Link:https://clui.org/ludb/site/jackalope-sculpture-douglas
13.
Source: Wikipedia
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackalope
14.
Source: youtube.com
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxKPjykcvIg
15.
Source: science.howstuffworks.com
Link:https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/strange-creatures/jackalope.htm
16.
Source: order-of-the-jackalope.com
Title: the jackalope
Link:https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-jackalope/
Additional References
17.
Source: wyostatearchives.wordpress.com
Title: Wyoming Postscripts Greetings From… Douglas!
Link:https://wyostatearchives.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/greetings-from-douglas/
Source snippet
Wyoming Postscripts21 Apr 2014 — His taxidermied specimen was put on display in Douglas' LaBonte Hotel. The jackalope has since become th...
18.
Source: youtube.com
Title: The Great Wyoming Jackalope
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qWctpQhlkE
Source snippet
The Jackalope: An American Frontier Legend | Wild West Documentary...
19.
Source: conversecountytourism.com
Link:https://www.conversecountytourism.com/news-and-stories/94-the-legendary-douglas-jackalope-wyomings-most-famous-mythical-creature
20.
Source: dilettantearmy.com
Link:https://dilettantearmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Jackalope-hunting-license-front-and-back_201310221235196101.pdf
21.
Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/YokaiSocietyTattoo/posts/h-e-a-l-e-dblack-and-grey-jackalope-tattoo-by-elisebrunkel-created-in-the-1930s-/1326333376141894/
22.
Source: reddit.com
Link:https://www.reddit.com/r/Cryptozoology/comments/12ynxlm/people_need_to_read_the_pinned_post_hoax_animals/
23.
Source: reddit.com
Link:https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/1096vs1/rabbit_with_shope_papilloma_virus_which_causes/
24.
Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/ConverseCounty/posts/new-this-year-ride-row-run-is-one-of-the-big-events-at-jackalope-days-jack-and-h/1409077101251615/
25.
Source: reddit.com
Link:https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1etnak/til_that_wyoming_issues_jackalope_hunting/
26.
Source: livewyldmag.com
Link:https://www.livewyldmag.com/live-wyld/the-legend-of-the-jackalope
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