The Lion That Started a Zoo

On September sixteenth, nineteen sixteen, a surgeon named Harry Wegeforth was driving through Balboa Park after an operation when he heard a lion roaring. The sound was coming from the animal collection that had been left behind after the Panama-California Exposition closed. Nobody had decided what to do with the animals yet. Wegeforth turned to his brother and said: Wouldn't it be splendid if San Diego had a zoo? I think I'll start one.

He was serious. The articles of incorporation for the San Diego Zoological Society were filed on December eleventh, nineteen sixteen, less than three months after Wegeforth heard that lion. Wegeforth became the first director and held the position for the rest of his life. He was aggressive, visionary, and not above trading animals with other institutions or persuading donors to fund exhibits that did not yet exist. He built the zoo from a borrowed cage to the most visited zoological institution in the United States.

The San Diego Zoo now covers one hundred acres, houses more than twelve thousand animals of more than six hundred eighty species and subspecies, and has run one of the most extensive species preservation and breeding programs of any zoo in the world. The California condor, nearly extinct in the nineteen eighties, was preserved partly through captive breeding programs that Wegeforth's zoo pioneered.

All of it traces back to September sixteenth, nineteen sixteen, a surgeon taking a different route through the park, a lion roaring at the right moment, and a man who said he would start a zoo and then actually did.