SALT LAKE CITY — Hogle Zoo will technically be 100 years old next year, and with it, a legacy that goes back to its humble beginnings in Liberty Park, with just a single cage of monkeys.
During its 99 years, the zoo's progress toward becoming the Mountain West's largest collection of animals has been chronicled in the Deseret News.
In 1911, a deer was also put on display, and the state's first zoo looked like it would be a hit. By 1912, the Salt Lake City Parks Department officially started a zoo with a $153 investment, that included 16 animals — monkeys, pheasants, foxes, squirrels, ducks, cranes and peafowl.
A year later, in 1913, the zoo had its first building to house animals. It added another exhibit, 100 rabbits strong, and was open mid-May to mid-December that year. Admission was free.
But it was 1916 when the zoo purchased its first elephant, the legendary Princess Alice from a traveling circus. Named for President Roosevelt's daughter Alice, area school children collected coins and raised $3,250 for the pachyderm's purchase price and travel expenses to Utah.
Later that year, the zoo boasted 275 animals and an annual budget of $4,788.
The next year, the zoo had a house erected for Princess Alice, and on April 29, 1918, she gave birth to Prince Utah. However, the baby elephant died on March 14, 1919, when his mother accidentally rolled over on him.
The Deseret News report claimed the mother elephant shed sad tears and exhibited mournful trumpeting after the death.
Still, Princess Alice remained the star of the zoo, at least until the early 1930s, when she began to run amok. In 1931, the elephant kept breaking loose and running down 700 East. Often, she would also run through Salt Lake City neighborhoods and have an odd collection of clothes stuck on her body, perhaps due to clotheslines strung throughout the yards at some homes at the height of the elephant.
The community was in an uproar and everyone agreed that the zoo needed new quarters in a more isolated location.
Enter Mr. and Mrs. James Hogle, who donated land at the mouth of Emigration Canyon to the newly formed Salt Lake Zoological Society.
By July 31, 1931, a main building (today's old elephant building) was dedicated and 14,000 visitors swarmed the zoo the next day.
Later that year, a monkey island exhibit was added to Hogle Zoo.
The zoo made the news again in 1934, when its water supply was cut off for failure to pay a $195 bill. The rather flamboyant zoo superintendent threatened to turn all the animals loose if the water was not restored. An agreement was reached, and the water was turned back on, without incident.
By the start of World War II, in the early 1940s, the zoo had fallen into a poor state of maintenance. But within a year, facilities were improved, and the zoo was even asking Salt Lake residents to donate their unwanted pets as exhibits.
The war meant supplies were meager, and local gardens were heavily relied upon to help feed many of the animals.
After the war, the zoo received some new improvements. However, in November of 1946, the zoo's polar bear Blizzard was shot, presumably by a visitor. It survived, but guns were then banned from the zoo.
In 1947, Avard Fairbanks sculpted two mountain lions on top of the granite columns at the zoo's entrance. These lions still grace the zoo's entrance today.
Princess Alice went on another rampage in 1947, ripping up concrete, a steel fountain and a tree within the zoo boundaries, but no one was hurt.
In 1948, the famous Shasta the liger was born, sired by a father lion and mother tiger, and by 1953, Princess Alice had to be put to sleep, having lived to nearly age 69.
The newspaper covered the zoo's alligator moving in 1967, to accommodate a repainting of their living quarters. In 1969, the Deseret News highlighted the zoo's Kodiak bears, and in 1971, the focus was on the zoo's bison herd.
The zoo has much more history to tell. However, a more recent milestone was met in 2009, when the zoo's annual attendance topped the one million mark for the first time.
Photo researcher Ron Fox has assembled many photos of Hogle Zoo, from past issues of the newspaper, which can be seen in full online at www.deseretnews.com. Deseret News Archives and www.hoglezoo.org were consulted for this article.
e-mail: lynn@desnews.com