1936: When Hogle Zoo almost moved back to Liberty Park

                                                     The front to Hogle Zoo today.

SALT Lake City’s Hogle Zoo moved from its original Liberty Park Location to its current mountainside residence near the mouth of Emigration Canyon in 1931. However, less than five years later there was a seldom reported in history effort to move the Zoo back to Liberty Park.

“Plans to move Zoo to Liberty Park Indorsed (sic)” was an April 24, 1936 headline in the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper.

The Zoo, then called “Hogle Gardens,” had originally moved because its elephant, Princess Alice, periodically broke free and roamed 700 East Street, putting the community in an uproar. A menagerie of clothing often adorned the pachyderm’s back after she ran through various backyard clothelines in the area.

A petition signed by a large group of S.L. citizens sparked the return to Liberty Park proposal. It not only believed the Park was a more central location for the zoo, but noted that some animals – especially Princess Alice – were homesick for their former home.

Indeed, an April 29, 1936 headline in the Salt Lake Telegram stated, “Princess Alice pining for Liberty Park, says ‘Dutch’ Shider, once her trainer.”

“She isn’t happy at the Gardens,” Shider said, “She pines for Liberty Park.”

                                             An elephant at Hogle Zoo in the late 1980s.

(On Nov. 15, 1931, the three-ton elephant had rebelled and injured a trainer and demolished a wooden trailer that was to move her to the new Zoo site.)

In 1936, there were 93 animals and 133 fowls housed at the zoo. (However, strangely the bears were not moved from Liberty Park and resided there alone for some years.)

Harold B. Lee, Salt Lake Commissioner of Streets and Public Improvements said he wanted to see the zoo in a place where the greatest majority of the people desire it.

The Zoo had resided at Liberty Park for nearly 25 years.

Not mentioned at the time were controversies that happened soon after the move to the mouth of Emigration Canyon. For example, the water supply to the Zoo was cut off in 1934 for failure to pay a $195 bill. The Zoo’s flamboyant superintendent threatened to turn all the animals loose if the water was not turned back on – and service was soon restored.

In addition, some of the original Zoo buildings at its mountainside location were not first class, or well kept.

Yet, the Zoo remained at the Mouth of Emigration Canyon, where it has expanded today to become one of the largest animal collections in the western states.

(Note: This was originally published in the Deseret News.)