Wyoming’s Weirdest Beasts and Tall Tales

Wyoming’s most famous monster is a joke that worked

The jackalope is Wyoming’s signature mystery-beast figure because almost everyone involved understands the joke and still plays along. It is usually described as a jackrabbit with deer antlers or pronghorn-like horns, a comic hybrid that fits the visual language of the American West: antlers, taxidermy, hunting licences, roadside souvenirs, and a wink to travellers who want the frontier to be a little stranger than it is.

Overview image for Wyoming's Weirdest Beasts and Tall Tales

Douglas, Wyoming, is the centre of the story. The city’s own account, republishing a New York Times piece, says Ralph Herrick admitted that his brother Doug and he created the jackalope in 1934 after placing a dead rabbit beside antlers in their taxidermy shop and deciding to mount the combination “the way it is”. The same account notes that Douglas promoted the creature with an eight-foot statue, tourist hunting licences, highway signs and local gift-shop merchandise.[City of Douglas]cityofdouglas.orgCity of Douglas The Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WYCity of Douglas The Legend of the Jackalope | Douglas, WY

A later account in The Scientist, adapted from Michael P. Branch’s work on the jackalope, places the first Herrick hoax mount in the Great Depression and says the brothers sold it for $10 to a local entrepreneur who displayed it above a hotel bar in Douglas. That detail matters because it shows how quickly the jackalope moved from private gag to public attraction: it was not just a weird object, but a conversation piece placed where locals and visitors would see it.[The Scientist]the-scientist.comThe Scientist On the Trail of the Jackalope | The ScientistThe Scientist On the Trail of the Jackalope | The Scientist

The jackalope also has an unusual “almost official” afterlife. Wyoming legislation in 2015 proposed declaring the jackalope, “appearing as a jackrabbit with either deer antlers or pronghorns”, the state legendary critter and identifying it as native to Douglas. The bill text is revealing even if the joke never needed a law to survive: Wyoming’s folklore had become civic branding, not just a campfire yarn.[Wyoming Legislature]wyoleg.govOpen source on wyoleg.gov.

Why the jackalope feels more believable than it should

The jackalope works because it sits close to several real things. Wyoming has jackrabbits, pronghorn, deer antlers, taxidermy culture and a long tradition of tall tales. A mounted jackalope is plainly artificial when examined carefully, but it looks just plausible enough at a glance to make the joke land.

There is also a biological shadow behind the myth. The Scientist notes that real rabbits can develop horn-like growths from Shope papilloma virus, a phenomenon described by virologist Richard Shope in the 1930s. Those growths are not antlers, and they do not make a jackalope a real species, but they help explain why “horned rabbit” stories have appeared in more than one culture.[The Scientist]the-scientist.comThe Scientist On the Trail of the Jackalope | The ScientistThe Scientist On the Trail of the Jackalope | The Scientist

That is the jackalope’s special charm: it is a known hoax with a real-world echo. Unlike a mystery animal report that depends on shaky eyewitness testimony, the jackalope’s evidence is deliberately manufactured. Its cultural value comes from performance. Douglas residents, souvenir sellers and visitors keep the legend alive by pretending, just enough, that the hunt is still on.

Wyoming's Weirdest Beasts and Tall Tales illustration 1

Bigfoot in Wyoming: mountain reports, sparse evidence

Wyoming’s Bigfoot tradition is more conventional than the jackalope story: tall, dark, hairy figures reported near forests, mountains, roads and campgrounds. The claims cluster where a reader would expect them to cluster — around Yellowstone, the Cody-to-east-gate corridor, Jackson country, the Wind River Range and other rugged areas with enough trees, distance and wildlife to make a fleeting sighting feel possible.

A 2022 Cowboy State Daily article, drawing on Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization data, reported 28 Wyoming sightings over roughly half a century, with Park County leading the state, followed by Lincoln, Teton and Carbon counties. The article also summarised a 1997 Cody-to-Yellowstone account in which witnesses claimed to see a dark, upright, heavy figure walking on two legs through binoculars.[Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comOpen source on cowboystatedaily.com.

These reports should be treated as claims, not evidence of an undiscovered primate. The National Park Service’s own archive discussion is notably cautious. In a Yellowstone post about unexplained correspondence, the park notes that staff responding to Bigfoot enquiries in 1980 could find no references to Bigfoot sightings in Yellowstone’s historical natural history records, and the article says the archives still cannot claim official proof of Bigfoot sightings.[National Park Service]nps.govNational Park Service Unexplained and Unreported Phenomenon in YellowstoneNational Park Service Unexplained and Unreported Phenomenon in Yellowstone

That caution does not make the stories meaningless. It tells us what kind of folklore Wyoming has: not a state-backed mystery, but a landscape where unofficial sightings attach themselves to credible-feeling places. Yellowstone and the Wind River mountains already suggest remoteness to outsiders. Add darkness, bears, bison, timber, distance and a human figure glimpsed for a few seconds, and a Bigfoot interpretation becomes culturally available even when ordinary explanations remain more likely.

Smetty and the lake monster of Lake DeSmet

Wyoming’s main lake-monster tradition belongs to Lake DeSmet in Johnson County, north of Buffalo. The creature is often called Smetty and is usually described in the broad “sea serpent” or “Loch Ness-type” family: long, aquatic, briefly seen, and difficult to separate from waves, shadows, large fish stories, and inherited local legend.

The strongest public-facing summary comes from the Wyoming Room of the Sheridan County Fulmer Library, which describes Smetty as a familiar Sheridan and Johnson County legend. It says hard evidence is “sorely lacking”, but lists local accounts preserved in books and articles: three ranchers in 1892 allegedly saw an enormous shadow like a sea serpent; in 1924, Frank Krout reportedly described a creature like a “wet bay mare” rising in the lake; and Edward Gillette’s 1925 Locating the Iron Trail included the Barkey family’s account of two “sea serpents” resembling “a long telephone pole with lard buckets attached”.[Wyoming Room]wyomingroom.blogspot.comWyoming Room The Wyoming RoomWyoming Room The Wyoming Room

Smetty is interesting because the legend is attached to a real and historically travelled place. Lake DeSmet sits near Bozeman Trail history and has long been folded into regional storytelling. Tourism material for Buffalo also presents the lake as a place of ghost and monster tales, specifically linking early twentieth-century sea-serpent stories to Gillette’s book.[Visit Buffalo WY]visitbuffalowy.comVisit Buffalo WYHaunted Places You Can Visit in WyomingVisit Buffalo WYHaunted Places You Can Visit in Wyoming

The sceptical reading is straightforward. A lake monster needs a breeding population, food supply and repeated reliable observations; Smetty has folklore, not that kind of evidence. The reports also use the classic language of lake monsters everywhere: shapes, shadows, wakes, “serpents”, and creatures rising briefly before disappearing. That does not make the stories worthless. It makes them local lake folklore — a way of making a striking body of water feel older, deeper and less domesticated than a map can show.

Wyoming's Weirdest Beasts and Tall Tales illustration 2

Yellowstone’s “lake music” is eerie, but not a monster

Yellowstone has a famous non-creature mystery that often drifts into the same imaginative space as cryptids: “lake music”. The National Park Service describes it as a buzzing sound that appears to move across Yellowstone Lake, with reports going back to the 1880s. The same NPS article quotes early park engineer Hiram Chittenden’s 1895 description of strange overhead sounds near Shoshone and Yellowstone Lakes and notes that scientific studies have not produced a settled explanation.[National Park Service]nps.govNational Park Service Unexplained and Unreported Phenomenon in YellowstoneNational Park Service Unexplained and Unreported Phenomenon in Yellowstone

This is not a lake monster claim in the usual sense. There is no body, no fin, no head rising from the water, no recurring animal description. But it belongs in a Wyoming mystery-beast page because readers often approach Yellowstone folklore as a bundle: Bigfoot letters, strange sounds, lake stories, geyser country and the emotional effect of being in a landscape that already feels otherworldly.

The useful distinction is this: Smetty is a creature legend; lake music is an unexplained natural or acoustic report. Both are strange. Only one claims an animal. Keeping that line clear lets the story stay intriguing without turning every unexplained sensation into a monster.

Real Wyoming wildlife explains part of the folklore

Wyoming does not need invented animals to feel wild. Yellowstone alone contains one of the richest large-mammal communities in the lower 48 states. The National Park Service lists 67 mammal species in the park, including black bears, grizzly bears, Canada lynx, coyotes, mountain lions, wolverines and wolves, along with large ungulates such as bison, elk, moose and pronghorn. As of 2024, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem had an estimated 1,030 grizzly bears, and black bears were described as common.[National Park Service]nps.govNational Park Service MammalsNational Park Service Mammals

That matters for cryptid interpretation. A bear standing briefly on its hind legs, a moose half-seen in timber, a bison silhouette in bad light, a cougar crossing a road, or a wolverine glimpsed at a distance can all become stranger in memory. The NPS also advises visitors to keep at least 100 yards from wolves and cougars and notes that, although they are skilled predators, they are not normally a danger to people; that kind of safety guidance is a reminder that Wyoming’s “monsters” often begin with very real animals seen under stressful conditions.[National Park Service]nps.govNational Park Service SafetyNational Park Service Safety

Rare animals add another layer. The NPS says wolverine and lynx live in Yellowstone but require large expanses of undisturbed habitat, while Wyoming Game and Fish material describes Canada lynx as very rare in the state. A rare genuine animal can feel cryptid-like to a witness who has never seen one before.[National Park Service]nps.govNational Park Service MammalsNational Park Service Mammals

The sceptical point is not that every witness is foolish. It is that Wyoming supplies ideal misidentification conditions: huge scale, low light, long viewing distances, unfamiliar animals, tourist expectations, and terrain that makes a normal creature appear and vanish quickly.

Wyoming's Weirdest Beasts and Tall Tales illustration 3

What Wyoming’s cryptids say about the state

Wyoming’s creature lore has three main modes.

First, there is the knowingly comic hoax, represented by the jackalope. It is not trying to win a scientific argument. It is a shared joke with antlers, postcards and mock hunting licences.

Second, there is the wilderness sighting claim, represented by Bigfoot reports. These stories lean on remoteness and witness sincerity, but they lack the physical evidence needed to move beyond anecdote.

Third, there is the place-bound water legend, represented by Smetty at Lake DeSmet. It turns a local lake into a stage for older fears about depth, drowning, shadows and the unknown.

What unites them is not proof of hidden animals. It is Wyoming’s sense of space. The state’s mountains, basins, lakes and roads make it easy to imagine that something could be just over the ridge or just below the surface. The best way to read Wyoming’s cryptids is therefore neither as confirmed zoology nor as empty nonsense. They are local stories that reveal how people turn landscape into memory: a taxidermy joke becomes a town symbol, a shadow on a lake becomes a serpent, and a dark figure near the trees becomes Bigfoot for one more generation of travellers.

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Endnotes

1. Source: nps.gov
Title: National Park Service Unexplained and Unreported Phenomenon in Yellowstone
Link:https://www.nps.gov/yell/blogs/unexplained-and-unreported-phenomenon-in-yellowstone.htm

2. Source: the-scientist.com
Title: The Scientist On the Trail of the Jackalope | The Scientist
Link:https://www.the-scientist.com/on-the-trail-of-the-jackalope-69653

3. Source: visitbuffalowy.com
Title: Visit Buffalo WYHaunted Places You Can Visit in Wyoming
Link:https://visitbuffalowy.com/stories/haunted-places-you-can-actually-visit/

4. Source: nps.gov
Title: National Park Service Mammals
Link:https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/mammals.htm

5. Source: nps.gov
Title: National Park Service Safety
Link:https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/safety.htm

6. Source: nps.gov
Link:https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/upload/YS_12_2_sm.pdf

7. Source: nps.gov
Link:https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/upload/YS_13_3_sm.pdf

8. Source: nps.gov
Title: Volcano House Register Volume 3 1885 1891 Transcript 508
Link:https://www.nps.gov/havo/learn/historyculture/upload/Volcano-House-Register-Volume-3-1885-1891_Transcript_508.pdf

9. Source: nps.gov
Link:https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/upload/wildland-fire-history.pdf

10. Source: home.nps.gov
Title: Moose Wilson corridor comments REACTED
Link:https://home.nps.gov/features/foia/Moose_Wilson_corridor_comments_REACTED.pdf

11. Source: nps.gov
Title: Volcano House Register Volume 5 1898 1908 Transcript 508
Link:https://www.nps.gov/havo/learn/historyculture/upload/Volcano-House-Register-Volume-5-1898-1908_Transcript_508.pdf

12. Source: nps.gov
Link:https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/education/upload/Work-House-Program-2019.pdf

13. Source: nps.gov
Link:https://www.nps.gov/wrst/learn/historyculture/upload/For-the-Love-of-Freedom-508-compliant.pdf

14. Source: nps.gov
Title: GLCA NNAS Scoping Comments 508
Link:https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/foia/upload/GLCA_NNAS_ScopingComments_508.pdf

15. Source: yellowstone.org
Title: frightening phenomena in yellowstone national park
Link:https://www.yellowstone.org/frightening-phenomena-in-yellowstone-national-park/

16. Source: yellowstone.org
Link:https://www.yellowstone.org/current-projects/wildlife-wonders-wilderness/

17. 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

18. Source: cowboystatedaily.com
Link:https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/08/23/newly-released-sasquatch-data-shows-more-wyoming-people-are-bigfoot-believers/

19. Source: wyoleg.gov
Link:https://wyoleg.gov/2015/bills/HB0066.pdf

20. Source: wyoleg.gov
Link:https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2015/HB0066

21. Source: wyomingroom.blogspot.com
Title: Wyoming Room The Wyoming Room
Link:https://wyomingroom.blogspot.com/2017/09/

22. Source: Wikipedia
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackalope

23. Source: Wikipedia
Title: Yellowstone Lake
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Lake

24. Source: wyoleg.gov
Link:https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2005/HB0004

25. Source: wyoleg.gov
Link:https://wyoleg.gov/2015/Digest/SF0009.PDF

26. Source: wyoleg.gov
Link:https://wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2015/SF0009

27. Source: wyoleg.gov
Link:https://wyoleg.gov/2015/HouseDigest.docx

28. Source: cityofdouglas.org
Title: Meet Jack | Douglas, WY
Link:https://www.cityofdouglas.org/235/Meet-Jack

29. Source: cowboystatedaily.com
Title: jonesing for jackalopes douglas cant get enough of these mythical antler rabbits
Link:https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/06/11/jonesing-for-jackalopes-douglas-cant-get-enough-of-these-mythical-antler-rabbits/