Qualla: Douglas, Wyoming - Jackalope Capital

Douglas, Wyoming - Jackalope Capital: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Douglas Herrick had been drinking. He came home with a dead jackrabbit, tossed the carcass onto the floor of the family taxidermy shop, and watched it slide to rest beside a rack of mounted deer antlers. He was nineteen, maybe a little younger; the family later disagreed on the year. What the brothers always agreed on was the moment - rabbit, antlers, side by side. Douglas turned to his younger brother Ralph and said something like, 'Let's mount it that way.' They did. They sold the result to Roy Ball, who ran the LaBonte Hotel a few blocks away, for the not-small sum of ten dollars. Roy hung the chimera behind the bar, where it stayed for decades, and where every traveling salesman who passed through eastern Wyoming demanded to know what kind of animal that was. That, more or less, is how the jackalope came to live in Douglas, Wyoming, population six thousand, give or take. The town has been the self-appointed Jackalope Capital of the World ever since.

Douglas, Wyoming - Jackalope Capital: Two Brothers, One Rabbit

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Douglas and Ralph Herrick learned taxidermy from a mail-order course their father bought during the Depression. They were good at it - good enough that the practical-joke mount they cobbled together in 1932 looked uncannily believable. The seam where antler met rabbit skull disap...

Douglas, Wyoming - Jackalope Capital: An Eight-Foot Statue and a Fake Holiday

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Douglas's chamber of commerce declared the town the Jackalope Capital of the World in 1965, and then - because there is no point in a half-committed bit - built an eight-foot fiberglass jackalope downtown. The statue wears a saddle so children can ride it for photos. Around the c...

Douglas, Wyoming - Jackalope Capital: How a Tall Tale Travels

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the 1940s, postcards showed cowboys lassoing jackalopes. By the 1960s, every truck stop bathroom from Cheyenne to Reno had one mounted above the sink. Folklore accreted around the animal the way barnacles accrete on a hull. Jackalopes, the stories went, could mimic human voice...

Douglas, Wyoming - Jackalope Capital: Refusing to Be in on the Joke

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What is delightful about Douglas is that the town never breaks character. The clerk hands you the hunting license with a straight face. The statue downtown is not winking. The Converse County Museum a few blocks away houses several of the Herricks' jackalopes alongside actual loc...

Douglas, Wyoming - Jackalope Capital: Getting There

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Douglas sits on Interstate 25 in eastern Wyoming, about an hour east of Casper. The eight-foot jackalope statue stands at the corner of Third and Center streets downtown. Jackalope Days runs in late June each year. The Wyoming State Fair takes over the fairgrounds every August - ...