San Diego Zoo Founded (1916)

The greatest zoo in the world—the San Diego Zoo—was founded on this date in 1916. Why? Because a medical doctor heard a lion roar and decided his city needed to hear that roar forever.

San Diego’s Balboa Park was the site for the 1915-16 Panama California Exposition. The two-year event celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and specifically San Diego as the first port of call for westbound ships using the canal. The exposition featured a row of cages with living wild animals, mostly from the Americas but also including an African lion. Toward the end of the event’s run, no one knew what to do with the animals.

But Dr. Harry Wegeforth had an idea. As he and his brother were driving by the exposition site, they heard the lion roar. Wegeforth said to his brother, “Wouldn’t it be splendid if San Diego had a zoo? You know ….I think I’ll start one.” So, he called a meeting with his brother and three other leading citizens on October 2, 1916, and formed the San Diego Zoological Society. Within a few months, they were incorporated and took possession of the row of cages and their inhabitants. True to Wegeforth’s vision, San Diego now had a zoo!

It wasn’t much at first, just an unfenced row of cages along a Balboa Park pathway. Harry Wegeforth’s determination to make it a success was about all it had going for it. He waged an unrelenting campaign to secure land from the city and funding from anyone who would contribute. The zoo scraped by on private gifts (Ellen Scripps, patron of many San Diego institutions, was a regular donor), leftover food from stores and restaurants, and animals brought to the city by sailors returning from their voyages. One of their first big animals was a Kodiak brown bear that had been a ship’s pet but outgrew its welcome. When presented the bear at the dock, Wegeforth needed a plan to get it to the zoo. With no alternatives, he put the bear on a leash, sat it in the front seat of his car and drove it to the zoo, to the amazement of all he passed (he later rode an Asian elephant from the train to the zoo, again startling San Diego’s citizens). The same year saw the birth of three lion cubs

Within a year, the local newspaper called the zoo “the largest and finest collection of animals on the Pacific Coast.” It was gaining popularity and visitation, and the city gave the zoo about a hundred acres as a permanent home in the park. Wegeforth hired a new administrative manager for the zoo in 1925, Belle Benchley. She quickly rose in his esteem and was soon made the zoo’s executive director so Wegeforth could go back to practicing medicine. She kept the job for 26 years . Benchley was an organizational whiz, but also had an instinctive connection to the animals. “She described herself as housekeeper, dietitian, consulting physician, and homemaker to an adopted family of animals.”