Dallas Zoo

The zoo's second life began in the 1980s. After decades of showing animals for crowds, the Dallas Zoo won accreditation from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 1985, and two bond measures totaling $30.4 million paid for the Wilds of Africa, which grouped African animals by region and added a slow monorail. It opened in June 1990. Rail and bus service reached the zoo in 1996, and in 2009 the city turned management over to the nonprofit Dallas Zoological Society.

What the plaque says

Dallas Zoo The Dallas Zoo traces its history to 1888, when the city purchased two deer and two mountain lions and placed them in pens in the City Park. In the 1890s, with the support of Dallas citizens, the City Council provided funds for the zoo, and additional animals were bought for the collection. The zoo was located in the City Park (now Old City Park) until 1910, when the animals were moved to the newly acquired Fair Park. Under the leadership of Zoo Commissioner William H. Atwell, the zoo's collection was enlarged and improved, and a new site was purchased in Marsalis Park in Oak Cliff. In the 1920s a special Zoo Commission was created by the city, and the collection was further developed with the acquisition of numerous specimens from famed game hunter and trapper Frank Buck. During the depression years of the 1930s the zoo facilities were upgraded with the help of the Federal Works Progress Administration Program. The Dallas Zoo Society was organized in 1955. By the 1960s the zoo had become a popular local attraction, and more improvements were made. Still popular with both Dallas citizens and tourists, the zoo continued to entertain and educate the public. 1988

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 2.8 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 2.9 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 3.4 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 4.0 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Colonel William G. Cooke — 0.3 mi
• Bilbo Jitney Line, Headquarters Site — 2.4 mi
• Dallas Morning News — 2.5 mi
• A. H. Belo Corporation — 2.6 mi