"Boomtown Rabbits": The Rabbit Market in Chatham County, North Carolina, 1880-1920: An article from Southern Cultures 18:2, Summer 2012: The Special Issue on Food

By Will Sexton

Although the same cottontails flourished across the region, Chatham County turned its rabbits into something like a regional brand, recognized throughout the South and along the eastern seaboard. By the end of the nineteenth century, Siler City had become the de facto rabbit capital of the southeast."

This article appears in the Summer 2012 issue of Southern Cultures. The full issue is also available as an ebook.

Southern Cultures is published quarterly (spring, summer, fall, winter) by the University of North Carolina Press. The journal is sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for the Study of the American South.

• Language: English
• Publisher: UNC Center for the Study of the American South
• Release date: May 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469600345

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Boomtown Rabbits

The Rabbit Market in Chatham County, North Carolina, 1880–1920

by Will Sexton

Although rabbits flourished across the region, in the years between 1880 and 1920, Chatham County turned its rabbits into something like a regional brand, recognized throughout the South and along the eastern seaboard. By the end of the nineteenth century, the railroad district of the county’s newest and biggest town, Siler City, had become the de facto rabbit capital of the Southeast. Photograph by Lewis Hine, courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress.

The Eastern cottontail rabbit thrived in the edges that ran all across the North Carolina Piedmont in the late nineteenth century. Perennial rabbit dynasties filled the fields, meadows, and hedgerows over the spring and summer mating cycles. In September of 1896, they ran in such numbers that reports came of trains hitting them by the score. On November 1 of that year, Chatham County, the happy hunting ground for Mr. Rabbit, opened what promised to be a banner season. The morning of December 2, snow began falling in the region, and continued throughout the day. Nine inches fell on the county seat of Pittsboro and brought out the children for snowballs and sledding in town. Out in the countryside, the snow forced the rabbits into the open. Tireless boys chased them in the fields and caught them without dogs, guns, or traps.¹

Some of the rabbits graced the dinner table fried or in a stew, but local produce dealers bought most. That week, resellers in Siler City bought more than 1,700 from hunters, and in Harper’s Crossroads, about 800. The Chatham railway depot known as Richmond reported shipping 2,400. On the morning of December 9, 7,250 pounds of rabbits, hunted, trapped, dressed, and packed in Chatham, departed the town of Moncure on a northbound express train. Within the day, wagons loaded with them saturated the state capital, Raleigh, where diners were always open about their love for Chatham rabbit.²

Although the same cottontails flourished across the region, in the years between 1880 and 1920, Chatham County turned its rabbits into something like a regional brand, recognized throughout the South and along the eastern seaboard. By the end of the nineteenth century, the railroad district of the county’s newest and biggest town, Siler City, had become the de facto rabbit capital of the Southeast. Jokes linking politics and Chatham rabbit entered the repertoire of statewide humor, as did the idealized rusticity of the county’s people. This