Fort Worth Zoo celebates 100 years of wild history

BY LESLIE WIMMER – Forth Worth Business Press

The Fort Worth Zoo opened in 1909 with an alligator, a coyote, two bear cubs, a peacock, a lion and a few rabbits, all purchased from a traveling carnival.

One hundred years later the zoo now houses about 5,000 animals, and is marking its century anniversary celebration with 10 weeks of zoo keeper chats. The chats will each focus on one decade of the zoo’s history, and some of the zoo’s animals, including chimpanzees, hippos, lions, elephants and flamingos.

“We’ve come a long, long way,” said Remekca Owens, public relations manager with the Fort Worth Zoo.

When the zoo first opened, it was located in Trinity Park. In 1910, about a year after opening, the Trinity River flooded, killing all of the zoo’s animals. In 1912, the zoo relocated to its current location in Forest Park.

“Our first major purchase was an elephant in 1923,” Owens said. “We started an elephant fund to solicit Queen Tut, and we purchased her in 1923. It was the Zoo’s first Asian elephant, and we also got our first permanent structure in order to house her in the ’20s.”

The structure built for Queen Tut was, years later, used in part for the zoo’s Koala Outback exhibit, which later closed, and today is used in the Australian Outback exhibit.

In 1924, the zoo added amusement rides to the park, including the mini-train still chugging between Trinity Park and the zoo.

Several improvements were made through the 1930s, including the construction of the alligator pond, Monkey Island, a bird house and several small exhibits.

Through donations, the zoo purchased a second elephant in 1940 and named it Penny, alluding to the number of pennies visitors contributed to the donation fund.

World War II stopped new projects for a few years, until 1945 when a post-war municipal bond passed, giving the zoo $85,000 for improvements. In 1946, the zoo purchased Texas’ first baby hippo, named “Bluebonnet Belle,” with money from a Star-Telegram fund.

The 1950s marked big changes in the zoo’s history, including the Zoological Society –which helped oversee the zoo – gaining official status as the Fort Worth Zoological Association in 1950, and later the same year becoming one of the first Southern zoos to become integrated.

In 1953, Amon Carter Jr. donated $50,000 to create an aquarium, which opened in 1954 as the James R. Record Aquarium. The facility featured more than 100 tanks and 400 species. The same year, “Pete,” an 18-foot python, escaped from its enclosure and captured headlines around the world for more than two weeks. Zoo officials later found Pete in the Monkey House, and used a six-foot pipe and loop to get the snake back to its cage. A few months after the escape, Pete turned out to be a female python, and gave birth to 50 white eggs. The zoo officially renamed her Patricia the Python.

The herpetarium was built in 1960, marking the park’s fourth indoor facility, which housed 125 animals. The new herpetarium, named the MOLA or Museum of Living Art, is expected to open in spring of 2010, and will house about 4,000 animals.

Through the 1970s, the park was fenced in, and officials instituted a general admission fee for adults of $1.

In 1985, a $1.25 million Asian elephant breeding facility opened, which included a new temperature-controlled barn, a 4-acre exhibit, and a 3,200-gallon swimming pool.

The World of Primates and Asian Falls exhibits opened in 1992, after the Fort Worth Zoological Association took control of the management of the zoo from the city of Fort Worth. Since the exhibits opened, the zoo has consistently seen more than 1 million visitors a year.

The late ‘90s brought the opening of exhibits featuring flamingos, komodo dragons, insects, penguins, meerkats and koalas.

In 2001, the $40 million, 8-acre Texas Wild! exhibit opened, in 2004 the Zoo opened its Parrot Paradise aviary, and in 2005 opened its Australian Outback exhibit. Most recently, in 2008, the Zoo opened its 1,600-square-foot indoor penguins exhibit.

The next step in development for the park is the Museum of Living Art, a 30,000-square-foot indoor and outdoor herpetological facility, which will house 264 species of amphibians and reptiles. Alexis Wilson, the zoo’s communications director, said the new facility will educate visitors both about the animals and wildlife conservation.

“We are opening our new facility in February of 2010,” Wilson said. “And we hope the opening of that building will bring not only a new level of awareness of these animals in the wild, but will also turn even more attention to one of the three parts of our mission statement, which is conservation.”

Fort Worth Zoo animal facts

• The zoo currently houses 42 endangered

species.

• The only zoo in the United States to house

members of all four Great Ape species:

Gorillas, orangutans, bonobos and

chimpanzees.

• The zoo is one of nine zoos in the world to

display two of the five rhino species in

captivity: Black and one-horned Asian rhinos.

• The zoo is one of eight zoos in the United

States housing an endangered Harpy eagle

• The zoo spearheads an international

conservation effort to save the Jamaican

iguana, the most endangered lizard in

the world.

Source: Fort Worth Zoo

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