Griffith Park Zoo | |
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34°08′01″N118°17′20″W / 34.1337°N 118.2888°W | |
Date opened | 1912 |
Date closed | August 1966 |
Location | Los Angeles, California |
Griffith Park Zoo, referred to today as the Old Los Angeles Zoo, is a city-owned former zoo now in ruins in Los Angeles, California, that opened in 1912 and closed in 1966 with the opening of the new Los Angeles Zoo. The abandoned site of the Griffith Park Zoo, complete with the ruins of animal enclosures, is now a picnic area featuring multiple hiking trails in Griffith Park. [1]
The first zoo in Los Angeles was the Eastlake Zoo in East Los Angeles, which opened in 1885. [2] : 37 The Griffith Park Zoo opened in 1912 with a grand total of 15 animals. The new zoo was built on the site of Griffith J. Griffith's defunct ostrich farm. [2] : 35 In the mid 1920s, film producer William Nicholas Selig donated many of the animals from his studios, which he had attempted to convert into an animal theme park, to the new zoo. [3]
It was expanded in the 1930s by work crews from the Works Progress Administration. [2] : 35 Most of the enclosures were built in the caves-with-iron-bars style which was then standard for zoos. [4]
As Los Angeles grew, the small Griffith Park Zoo was increasingly criticized as an "inadequate, ugly, poorly designed and under-financed collection of beat-up cages", [5] despite drawing more than two million visitors a year. [6] In 1958 the city passed an $8 million bond measure to create a brand new zoo. [2] : 35 Griffith Park Zoo closed in August 1966 and its animals were transferred to the new Los Angeles Zoo two miles away, which opened in November 1966. [7] The animal enclosures, with the bars removed, were left as ruins; picnic benches or tables were installed in some of them for park visitors. [8]
The San Diego Zoo Safari Park is a zoo and safari park in San Diego, California, located in San Pasqual Valley. Opened in 1972, the park operates as a sister location to the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park; it features a more specific focus on animals from arid environments.
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William Nicholas Selig was a vaudeville performer and pioneer of the American motion picture industry. His stage billing as Colonel Selig would be used for the rest of his career, even as he moved into film production.
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