![]() ![]() ![]() From there, they’d pass through a tunnel into a zoo that offered camel rides, sailboats on a lake and circus shows featuring the likes of Chang Woo Gow the Chinese Giant, supposedly the tallest man in the world.ĭespite a ban on alcohol, the gardens drew thousands on weekends, at least until their slide into disrepair after Woodward’s death. Visitors entered through Woodward’s home and conservatory, where they could ogle his fine art and precious minerals, including a gold nugget from the Sierra mountains weighing almost 100 pounds. And for the animals, well, their lives were not great, but at least the experience taught our society what not to do. They provided endless entertainment for families who might have never otherwise seen an Asian elephant – in Golden Gate Park, no less. The zoological gardens of the day were half-amusement parks, half-vanity projects for the rich and powerful. While it’s not practical to look at the Bay Area’s 19th-century zoos for best practices, it certainly is fascinating. And at the Oakland Zoo, they’re stabilizing a historic Blackfeet Nation bison herd by bringing Montana bison in to breed with Yellowstone ones, then sending the mamas and babies back to the Blackfeet. The California Academy of Sciences’ new African penguin chicks are part of a species-survival plan. Santa Rosa’s Safari West is hailing this year’s birth of a southern white rhino as a step to help restore the global population. There are different priorities, such as conservation. We now know, more than a century and a half later, that the best way to run a zoo is not to ride the animals like show ponies. “These were live animals – inside a basement – and it just seemed like the most inappropriate place in the world to do this stuff.” “Grizzly Adams was trying to make a buck any way he could with his interests, and this was one way to draw people in,” says Christopher Pollock, historian in residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department. In karmic turnaround, bears caused his downfall – he got mauled so much, it left his brain tissue exposed, and he died in 1860 of suspected meningitis. Visitors paying 25 cents to the Mountaineer Museum could watch Grizzly wrestle and ride around on top of his bears. After shooting a mother bear in the wild, he captured her cubs and trained them to walk on leashes and carry his packs. ![]() Located in a basement in what’s now the Financial District, the 1850s museum boasted the “largest collection of wild animals ever brought together in California,” according to a contemporary news report, including grizzly bears, eagles, elk, a lion, a tiger and an “enormous HOG, 800 pounds, from Monterey.”Īdams was a failed gold miner-turned-animal trainer whose antics with wild bears sound like something from television (which it was, in the 1970s). Perhaps the earliest zoo in San Francisco – “zoo” in a very loose sense – was the Mountaineer Museum run by John Capen Adams, aka Grizzly Adams. ![]()
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