The small town of West Milford, New Jersey, and Clinton Road offer a compelling case study in how real places, events, and folklore converge to create local legends. This research examines documented locations like Warner Brothers’ Jungle Habitat and Richard Cross’s castle alongside mysterious tales such as the Ghost Boy of Dead Man’s Curve and Jiles Jones. It explores how stories blur fact and fiction—as seen with Terrace Pond—and how local events spark legends that gain wider attention through media and information spread. The study delves into West Milford’s narratives to understand how ordinary sites transform into renowned destinations for the unexplainable. Employing historical documents, modern publications, media analysis, and autoethnography, the research presents insights on the creation and perpetuation of legends. Findings are shared in a poster format featuring visual maps and images, immersing audiences in West Milford’s evolving cultural identity.

Skunny Wundy is a 1926 book for children by Arthur Parker (Seneca). One of these stories tells how the young Lynx named Jiggon Sassy lost its long tail and became the bobcat. While this seems a just-so story about why the bobcat has a short tail, it is actually one of a set of Iroquoian myths about wild cats, mainly “long tails,” that is, panthers. Parker’s “Jiggon Sassy,” a word that refers to a cat’s face, plays on the name of his ancestor, Jigansahse, the Wildcat. Jigansahe’s significant other identities as the Mother of Nations and the Peace Queen are related to her mythical origin as the Wildcat. Taken together, the body of Seneca cat mythology-- Jiggon Sassy, the Death Panther, and the panther mother versus the whirlwind-- illustrate beliefs about shared origin, national identity, alliance, values, and relationships among the Seneca and their Iroquoian neighbors.

Media entertainment has been a source of enjoyment since its inception. Westerns are a famous example of the success of literature and film. The popularity of Westerns immortalized the cowboy as an American icon that celebrated the nation’s core ideals of strength, freedom, and masculinity. Despite this, cowboys' authentic activities and culture do not align with this glamorized figure. Memoirs and personal accounts were compared to influential cowboy literature and film to assess discrepancies between the cowboy as an icon as opposed to a historical figure. The historical context that surrounded the romanticization of the cowboy explained why cowboys became a cultural icon. The cowboy figure was molded to appeal to a post-industrialization audience influenced by nostalgia and a desire for an unconventional lifestyle to break everyday monotony.