Did There Used to be a Pokémon Statue in Orange County, New York?

Am I tripping? Is this a Mandala effect? I swear there was a Pokémon statue in Orange County, New York when I was a kid. Specifically, a statue of the Pokémon Lapras. This is a memory that I have had all my life, and no one can validate this for me!

Lapras Statue in Orange County, New York

This came up during a random conversation at Thanksgiving last week. We were talking about the old Sinclair dinosaur statue in Marlborough off of Route 9W. That sparked a memory that there was another dinosaur-like stature on that side of the river. When I was really young, probably about 3 to 6 years old, I distinctly remember a life-sized statue of the Pokémon Lapras off the side of the road near a golf course. We would pass it on the way to my grandparents' house in Cornwall.

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I told everyone this memory, but at first, no one could remember it. I tried doing a search online, but I couldn't find any validation that there was once a Lapras statue in Orange County. I showed a picture of the Pokémon to everyone, and it only jogged the memory of my mom. She said it looked familiar, and that she could picture a statue looking similar to that, but she couldn't remember where exactly.

What the Heck is a Lapras?

First of all, for those of you who are not familiar with Pokémon and Lapras, I'll give you a quick summary. Pokémon originated in 1996, and is a Japanese media franchise expanding from TV shows, movies, video games, card games, and more. Pokémon are animal-like creatures that have special abilities, mostly centered around some kind of element (water type, grass type, earth type, fire type, etc). Pokémon trainers are people who catch, train, care for, and battle with Pokémon.

Lapras was introduced in Generation 1 of Pokémon, classified at #131 our of 151. For reference, we are currently up to 1,008. Lapras is a dual-type Water/Ice Pokémon.  It has a look of an aquatic dinosaur, kind of like a blue Loch Ness monster with a shell on its back. According to Bulbapedia, a Lapras resembles a plesiosaur. A Lapras stands at 8' 2" tall with an average weight right around 500 pounds. If memory serves me right, this statue would've been roughly around 8 feet tall, but then again, a lot of things seemed taller to me back then.

Where Was This Lapras Statue?

As I said before, I remembered seeing it on my way to Cornwall as a kid. The route we most often took was Route 9W starting at the Mid-Hudson Bridge, and then going South. I believed the statue was right on the side of the road at a golf course/driving range. The only place that comes to mind is the now-shut down golf course and current sports bar, Creek Side Pub.

Maybe the statue wasn't of Lapras but of some other kind of dinosaur. Maybe it wasn't off Route 9W, but it was somewhere else nearby. I'm not sure what other driving range it could have been at. We didn't take too many different routes to get to Cornwall, so I feel like Creek Side Pub is the most probable location.

I swear that this is more than just some childhood imagination run wild, I am certain that there used to be a statue closely resembling a Lapras resided in or around Orange County about 20 years ago. If anyone has any information on this statue, please message us through the app, or comment on our social media.