LOOKING BACK: THE MANITO PARK ZOO

Manito Park is one of the city’s natural gems. Its expanse, its beauty, its celebration of our city’s diversity is the source of community pride. But there was a time when it hosted a zoo.

riters at the Spokane Gazette reported on the creation of the zoo on September 10, 1904.

“At a meeting of the park commission in the office of the Mayor,” they wrote, “it was decided to establish a zoological garden in Manito park, to build an artificial lake in that park and to sell the rich, black loam soil to Liberty park to improve the flower beds and lawns at that park.”

Mayor Frank L. Boyd heralded the coming of the animals in the same article. “On behalf of the board,” he said, “I was authorized to accept two cow elk that have been offered by the city of Tacoma and to accept two deer offered the city by M.E. Hay of

Wilbur.”

Not all zoo investments were as sound. Two wolverines purchase in May of 1905 turned out to be coyotes.

By March of 1911, the zoo was being improved and remodeled to make room for two timber wolves and a cross section of waterfowl and pheasants. And in the spring of 1913, a group of animals from Yellowstone National park were welcomed by the zoo—six more elk and two buffaloes.

Monkeys were added in April of 1911, but their fights caused ample concern. “Domestic troubles in the monkey family,” the reporters wrote in the Gazette. Human Society officer, Mrs. J.H.