Clip of the Day

How Did the San Diego Zoo Begin? The way the story goes, it began with a roar! In 1916 when San Diego hosted an exposition (like a world's fair) to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal. Among the exhibits were groups of animals scattered throughout Balboa Park. On September 16, a local physician, Dr. Harry Wegeforth, was driving through the Park and heard––you guessed it––the roar of the Panama California Exposition's lions. Dr. Harry thought that San Diego needed a zoo, and decided to start one. He began with the animals left over from the exposition, and the rest, as they say, is history! From this beginning, Dr. Harry spent the rest of his life developing the Zoo. He was a genius at collecting money, plants, and animals, and we still tell "Dr. Harry stories" about some of his more inventive episodes. He set us up as a Zoological Society, so it would be a privately-owned (not owned by the city, as many zoos are), not-for-profit corporation, and managed by a board of trustees. For years, Dr. Harry traveled around the country and the world, finding animals and plants from all over the globe, and building good business relations with other zoos. He rode his horse around the 100-acre (40.5-hectare) grounds of the Zoo, with its unique layout of mesas and canyons, deciding where to place the collections.