Oregon Zoo
Oregon Zoo, originally the Portland Zoo and later the Washington Park Zoo, is a zoo located in Washington Park, Portland, Oregon, about 2 miles southwest of downtown Portland. It is the oldest zoo on the west side of the city
The 26-hectare zoo is owned by the Metro regional government. It is currently home to more than 1,800 animals of more than 230 species, including 19 endangered species and 9 threatened species. It also has an extensive plant collection in its specialized gardens and animal exhibits. It currently only works in the zoo.
The Oregon Zoo is Oregon’s largest paid visitor attraction and arguably the most popular with more than 1.6 million visitors in 2016. The zoo is an affiliate of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the global Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
The Oregon Zoo was founded in 1888, making it the oldest zoo in North America. It all started with two bears bought by Richard Knight – a brown bear and a brown bear. Knight, a former seaman who became a pharmacist, began collecting animals from his seaman friends. He kept his collection in the back of his pharmacy on Third Street and Morrison Street. they caring for the animals became prime of responsibility, they tried to sell them to the City of Portland. Instead of buying the animals, the city existing Knight two circus cages and permissible him to place the caged bears on the grounds of Washington Park.
However, Knight’s family and friends continued to care for and feed the bears. It wasn’t long before Knight turned to the city council again about bears. Just five months later, he offered the city to donate the bears and their cages. Portland City Council established his offer on November 8, 1888, starting the Portland Zoo. Located in Washington Park, they were sometimes referred to as the Washington Park Zoo.
By 1894 there were more than 300 animals in the zoo’s collection. In 1925 the zoo moved to what is now the Portland Japanese Garden, still in Washington Park.
The zoo was relocated to its current location in 1958-1959, designed by Lawrence, Tucker, and Wallmann. This was located in Hoyt Park, west of Washington Park, but a few years later the two parks were combined as Washington Park. At that time, the Portland Zoo Railway was built to connect the zoo to its former location in Washington Park and other attractions there. The new, much larger area was built in stages over a year, with the first animals moving in the spring of 1958 and restricted public access being opened in June 1958, the day after the opening of the first section of the zoo. all through the change period, the new zoo was only open on weekends, as nearly all of the animals were still to come at the recent location for their new enclosures to be completed. However, the new train operated six days a week until mid-September. In the meantime, the old zoo remains in action, but in May 1959 it was only pedestrian access to be reachable to access to automobiles at the last in use months. A total of 29 other calves were born in the Oregon Zoo, including Packy’s seven sons (two of whom, Shine and Rama, stayed at the zoo), making it the zoo’s most successful elephant breeding program. In 2008, RoseTu, the granddaughter of the zoo’s first elephant, gave birth to Rosy, a son named Samudra. The birth made Samudra the first captive-born, third-generation elephant in North America.
The number of visitors in 1962, the year Packy was born, was 1.2. In the years that followed, the number of animals fell from 450 (150 species) in 1962 to 386 (the 123 species) in 1976, and the annual number of visitors also went back in the same period it reached its lowest point in 1975 with 448,198 visitors