Jack Rabbit Trading Post

Jack Rabbit Trading Post is a souvenir shop along I-40 in Arizona, just west of Joseph City. The shop is the first of five Route 66 attractions to survive the creation of the interstate with its own, named exit.

First opened in the 1940s, Jack Rabbit Trading Post is still in operation today, surviving the rise and fall of Route 66, as well as several different owners. Much of this prosperity owes to clever marketing: the original owner, James Taylor – no relation to the folk singer – put up billboards all along the Mother Road, from Arizona to Missouri, a tactic since copied by many a tourist trap. The hand-painted signs depicted the store’s iconic jackrabbit logo, culminating in a final HERE IT IS billboard beside the trading post. Few, if any, of the billboards remain, except for the (now legendary) HERE IT IS sign, which is repainted every few years. Jack Rabbit Trading Post was also parodied in Disney-Pixar’s Cars in 2006. The HERE IT IS sign was shown with a Ford Model T instead of the jackrabbit logo.