Denver Zoo
Founded In 1896 Around An Orphaned Black Bear Cub Given To The Mayor, And Home In 1918 To Bear Mountain The First Naturalistic Habitat Built In Any American Zoo, Cast In Concrete From Real Rock Formations And The Model For Everything That Followed. · Denver, Colorado
Denver Zoo began in 1896 with an orphaned black bear cub that somebody gave to the mayor, and it changed the world's zoos twenty-two years later. Bear Mountain, opened in 1918, was the first naturalistic habitat built in any American zoo - concrete cast directly from real rock formations near Morrison rather than iron bars and tiled walls - and every barless enclosure since descends from it. It still stands. Around it, eighty acres of City Park now hold one of the most visited zoos in the country, with Toyota Elephant Passage built for herd movement rather than display, Predator Ridge rotating lions and hyenas through shared ground, and a conservation programme that works in the field rather than only at home. It is flat, it is large, and the Front Range sits on the skyline behind the giraffes - and unlike Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, which is built up a mountainside, none of it involves a climb, which makes a whole day here far easier with children or a wheelchair.
2300 Steele Street, Denver, Colorado, 80205, United States
Open daily year-round during daytime hours, with extended summer hours and Zoo Lights through December evenings, which is separately ticketed and sells out. Tickets are timed and are cheaper booked online. Parking is on site and fills on fine weekends and school holidays. Some indoor buildings close in extreme weather, and outdoor animals may be off exhibit in heat or cold - the cold-climate species are best in winter, when the zoo is also at its quietest.