Fort Wayne Children's Zoo: No Cages, One Tasmanian Devil
Near Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fort Wayne, Indiana, is not typically on lists of American zoo destinations. But the Children's Zoo here has quietly built a reputation that extends well beyond northeast Indiana, and it was built on one radical design idea from the moment it opened.
The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo opened on July third, nineteen sixty-five, on five and a half acres in Franke Park, with eighteen animal exhibits. Over six thousand people arrived on opening day. What distinguished the zoo from its very first season was a deliberate choice to minimize barriers. The original director wanted visitors and animals close together. Moats and naturalistic separation replaced traditional cages wherever possible. The goal was an encounter, not a display.
Over the following decades the zoo expanded its philosophy outward into increasingly ambitious habitat recreations. The African Veldt opened in nineteen seventy-six, with savanna animals grazing in open fields. The Australian Adventure debuted in nineteen eighty-seven, introducing animals from the Outback. In nineteen ninety-four the Indonesian Rain Forest opened under a dome, followed by Orangutan Valley in nineteen ninety-five and Tiger Forest in nineteen ninety-six.
Each expansion was thematically organized around a specific region of the world, which turned the zoo into something of an immersive geography lesson for the children it was explicitly designed to serve.
The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo holds one animal distinction that is genuinely unusual. It is the only zoological institution in the world to exhibit a Tasmanian devil outside of Australia. The species is rarely exported, given conservation concerns around a facial tumor disease that has devastated wild populations on the island of Tasmania. Fort Wayne was permitted to have one.
More than five hundred thousand people visit each year. The zoo that opened with eighteen exhibits on five and a half acres now operates across thirty-eight acres. And it still does not believe very much in cages.
