Amy's Creative Pursuits: 42 Foot Tall Jackalope

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Wall, South Dakota

This is part fifteen of a travel series to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Parks. If you'd like to start at the beginning, go HERE!

If you are driving out west from the east, you will most likely to pass through Wall South Dakota. Because I have been out west before, I have written about Wall in 2019 in THIS POST; so I'm not going to go into all the details that were in that original post. If you're interested in hearing more, check it out!

Wall is not only the gateway to the Badlands, and all destinations west, but it is a great spot to spend the night, get some eats, and stretch your legs.

We spent the night in Wall on the way home from Yellowstone. Below is a panoramic view of the main shopping street.

The street is so vacant because it was about 7:00 am on a Sunday morning. We wanted to get a head start on our last leg home, so we arrived at a restaurant that was serving breakfast before it even opened. It gave me some time to get some unobstructed views of the cute downtown buildings because normally this area is so crowded with cars, tourist buses, and buildings it is hard to get a descent photograph.

The Wall Drug and Cafe is the most famous part of Wall known for their "Free Ice Water" and 5 cent coffee. We were bummed we couldn't eat breakfast there because they didn't open till 8:00.

The main reason I wanted to do a second post on Wall is because they have a new attraction I really wanted to share: A GIANT JACKALOPE!

The Jackalope is a mythical animal of North American Folklore described as a jack rabbit with antelope horns. You can find Jackalopes for sale all over in gift shops across the west.

The 42 foot tall Jackalope was built in 2022 by chainsaw bros Jarret and Jordan Dahl. They built it to attract customers to their chainsaw shop, and by golly, it sure does.

For a small fee, you can go up inside the Jackalope and get great views of the town of Wall, but the inside, is the real treat! The interior is filled with chain saw carving wonders and pictures of the old west.

There are 71 "wood spirits" carved into the support beams and railings. According to the bros "some were hidden pretty good".

We loved the twisted wood used for the staircase.

This is the door leading to the balcony. Isn't it incredible?

My husband always asks me to wave when he's photographing me or taking a video. So silly. Oh, and we went to the Jackalope right after dinner and had leftovers, that's why I'm holding a styrofoam carton.

You would think something so intricate would have taken forever to complete. Nope, the bros completed it in 21 days. I have no idea how they did it. They used 60,000 nails and 3,000 different pieces of wood.

Here is a video we made for the grandkids showing us walking through the Jackalope.