Skip to main content

Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens

Image
By

My family is a Disney family and from Raleigh and now Charlotte it is anywhere from an 8 to 10 hours drive from North Carolina to Orlando.   We have been to Disney five times since 2014 and with now two kids in tow, we typically split the trip down with an overnight stop along the way.  And where possible be able to do an activity that afternoon following the drive.  One of the places we have frequently stayed at is Jacksonville, Florida.  In January 2016, we visited the Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens before heading to our hotel.


The Zoo is located on over 120 acres along the Trout River and has been in operation since 1925.  The first zoo in the city opened in 1914.  Known as the Municipal Zoo, it was located at 3rd and Broad Streets near downtown Jacksonville.  Eleven years later, the Zoo moved to its current location north of the city along the Trout River.


Over the decades, the zoo expanded to include a number of well known exhibits.  The Range of Jaguar, Dinosauria, Great Apes, and Plains of East Africa are some of the zoo's best known exhibits.  In the early 2000s, the Zoo expanded to include botanical gardens that are integrated within the various exhibits.


When we visited, we didn't see the whole zoo; however, we greatly enjoyed the grounds.  Most areas of the zoo loop off of the Main Path making it easy to navigate the grounds.  The exhibit habitats for many of the animals were open spaces.  One of our favorites was the feeding of the giraffes and how close we could get to them.  Over the years, we have learned that feeding giraffes is a common attractions at zoo; but this was our first time and we all enjoyed it.


The Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens are open from 9am to 5pm seven days a week.  Admission ranges from $24.95/adults - $19.95/children for general admission to $32.95/adults - $25.95/children for a total experience package that includes carousel and train rides, animal feedings, and other in zoo attractions.  It is definitely worth a visit and if you are making a long trek further south into Florida, the Zoo and an overnight stay in Jacksonville may be a welcome relief.

Sources & Links:

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ghost Town Tuesday; The Packard Plant and Michigan Central Station

By
A couple years back I was in Metro Detroit, against my better judgement I decided on a ruins hunt in the City. Why am I featuring a city of 673,000 approximate residents on a Ghost Town Tuesday?   The reason is two fold; back in 1950 the City of Detroit had an approximate population of 1,850,000 residents at the height of the Domestic Automotive Industry.  A common definition of a "ghost town" is either an abandoned place or a place that has lost the vast majority of it's population.  With a almost 63.6% population decline the City of Detroit would certainly meet the criteria of a place that has lost most of it's population.  The second reason is simply that Detroit is the City I was born in and the truth is that I don't have many photos from when it wasn't a civic corpse. For whatever reason the day I picked to go to downtown Detroit had to be one of the most gloomy late summer days I've ever seen in Michigan.  The rain was coming down pretty hard ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Tale of Tollhouse Road, western California State Route 168 and failed Piute Pass Highway

By
Western California State Route 168 is entirely located in Fresno County and is linked historically to the Tollhouse Road corridor.   Tollhouse Road is one of the oldest highways in the Sierra Nevada range of Fresno County. The corridor presently begins in at Clovis Avenue in downtown Clovis and extends northeast to Huntington Lake. In 1866 the Woods Brothers established mining claims on Pine Ridge. In 1867 Fresno County would grant the brothers a toll franchise to construct a roadway to the desirable logging areas atop Pine Ridge and near Dinkey Creek. The Woods would establish a tollhouse at the start of their franchise road and lumber mill. The lumber mill attracted settlers which led to the establishment of the mountain town of Tollhouse. Fresno County would purchase the Tollhouse Road in 1878 and make it a public highway. The county would remove the tolls and incorporate the corridor into the existing county road network. Prior to the establishment of Clovis in 1...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Vague Original Southern Terminus of US Route 91 in the Californian Mojave Desert

By
From a modern standpoint, the routing of Interstate 15 between Barstow to the Nevada state line is very clear.  Historically regarding US Route 91 this wasn't the case as the hostile and barren parts of the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County had few good roadways.   In 1920 the Arrowhead Trail commissioned the Silver Lake Cutoff from Las Vegas southwest to Daggett.  The Silver Lake Cutoff saved 90 miles of travel from the original highway corridor by using an alignment utilizing Jean, Goodsprings, Ripley, Kingston and Silver Lake.  Although the Silver Lake Cutoff existed during the early development of the US Route System it was far more haggard than the original Arrowhead Trail alignment south of Las Vegas through Searchlight and Bannock.  During the planning phase of the US Route System the southern terminus of US Route 91 was to be located at US Route 60 (later US Route 66) in Bannock, California to the west of Needles.  When the US Route Sys...
Post a Comment
Read more