State: Arizona · Statute: None found · Filed by The Bureau of Real Laws
It is illegal in Arizona — usually pinned to Kingman — for a donkey to sleep in a bathtub after 7:00 p.m. This is one of the most repeated "weird laws" in America. It has appeared in trivia books, listicles, and at least one law firm's blog. It also has, as far as anyone can demonstrate, never existed.
The tale is irresistible, which should be your first warning. Around 1924, a rancher near Kingman kept a donkey that had taken to sleeping in an abandoned bathtub on his property. Then a local dam failed, floodwater rolled through, and the donkey — still napping in its tub — was carried off down a wash, in some versions nearly a mile, before landing in a basin. Rescuing one waterlogged donkey cost the community so much time, money, and indignity that the townspeople demanded a law, and thus: no donkeys sleeping in bathtubs.
Every element is perfectly shaped for retelling. That is precisely the problem.
The Bureau went looking for the law, as the Bureau does. Here is what is not there: there is no such provision in the Arizona Revised Statutes. No one has ever produced a Kingman or Mohave County ordinance number, a session law, a council minute, or a single contemporaneous newspaper item about the great donkey rescue of 1924. Legal writers who have gone hunting for this one come back with the same empty net — the prohibition has never been identified in any actual code, and the claim is, by all available evidence, folklore rather than law.
Watch the story mutate between tellings and you can see folklore doing its work in real time. In one version the law passed in 1924; in another, the flood happened "a few years before the law was passed in 1924." One recent retelling gives the donkey a name, Smiley — a detail absent from earlier accounts, because legends acquire names the way ships acquire barnacles. Sometimes it's a state law, sometimes a Kingman ordinance. And that oddly specific "after 7 p.m." curfew — the detail that makes people believe it must be real, because who would invent that? — is a classic folklore ornament. Real animal ordinances regulate keeping, noise, and roaming. They do not set bedtimes for livestock.
Even the flood itself remains unverified as a documented event; no source we found cites a 1924 dam failure near Kingman from any primary record. The whole episode may rest on nothing more than a good story told once in the right saloon.
Arizona is free to regulate donkeys, bathtubs, and their intersection any time it likes. It simply hasn't. Your donkey may nap in a tub at 6:59 p.m., at 7:01 p.m., and at high noon, and no Arizona statute will stir. If a flood comes, that's between you, your donkey, and your insurance company.
VERDICT: FOLKLORE. The most famous law in Arizona is the one that isn't.
The Other Half: 50% of every tip to this Bureau is donated to UNRWA USA for Palestine refugees in need. Tip the Bureau →
The Bureau grows one share at a time — and half of every tip goes to UNRWA USA for Palestine refugees.
Home · Case Files · Law Library · FAQ · Public Counter · About · Privacy Policy · Contact