The Caldwell Zoo: From Easter Bunnies to Five Hundred Species
Near Tyler, Texas
What is now one of the most highly regarded zoos in the American South began, with improbable modesty, as a collection of Easter bunnies and ducklings. In nineteen thirty-seven, a program called the Child Development Laboratory was set up in Tyler under the auspices of the Hogg Foundation and the American Association of University Women. David King Caldwell and his wife ran it, bringing in small animals for the pleasure and education of children.
The collection grew gradually, then less gradually. By nineteen fifty-three, Caldwell and his wife Lottie had formalized what they were building: they opened the Children's Zoo and Play School as a deliberate gift to the Tyler community, admitting visitors on the site that had evolved from the original modest collection. By nineteen sixty-seven the zoo featured over five hundred animals representing eighty-seven species.
The need for more space became obvious. Land in the rolling northeast corner of Tyler was donated, new facilities were constructed, and the animals moved to the current location on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
The Caldwell Zoo today holds approximately two thousand animals and is sustained by admissions and private donations. It is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. In a region without a natural geography that suggests a major zoological park, East Texas is pine forest and red clay, not savanna, the Caldwell Zoo stands as evidence of what sustained local generosity can construct over the course of eighty-some years.
