Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens

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:

Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens
The humble beginnings of the Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens ---Jacksonville Magazine

How To Get There:

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Gribblenation

Search This Blog