How an unexpected gift launched Minnesota’s oldest zoo

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More than 120 years after its founding, St. Paul’s Como Zoo is home to a menagerie of hundreds, including Samson the gorilla, Ivy the young giraffe and an anaconda called Xena.

But the state’s oldest zoo began almost by accident in 1897, with three whitetail deer.

Those deer have been on Max Murphy’s mind recently, as he plans a move from St. Paul’s Lowertown to Como Park.

Timelines, articles and a sign at the zoo all mention that the facility began when the city of St. Paul received the deer as a gift. Officials then decided to create a pen for them in Como Park.

To Murphy, the gift seemed oddly unexplained.

He wrote to Curious Minnesota, the Strib’s reader-powered reporting project, to ask: “Who gifted those deer to the city and why?”

The deer were a gift from the Minneapolis Park Board and a St. Paul livestock dealer named Charles Haas, according to a lively 1992 Ramsey County History magazine account by Margaret Manship, the daughter of Como’s first zookeeper.

The exact motivations for the donation aren’t clear. Gifts of animals, however, were popular at the time. The deer were quickly followed by an ever-growing list of creatures given as presents from prominent Minnesotans, Manship wrote.

The zoo, which is now operated by the St. Paul Parks and Recreation Department, has remained an enduring landmark in the city. It almost closed twice and didn’t have a perimeter fence until 1972. But through it all, the price of admission has stayed the same: It’s free (donations encouraged).

In Como Zoo’s first three decades, it took in zebu cattle donated by railroad baron James J. Hill and two buffalo from Lt. Gov. Thomas Frankson, a monkey, as well as two red foxes, a parrot, four elk and a black bear named Peggy, according to Manship and a timeline the zoo prepared for its centennial.

Minneapolis had its own zoo: Longfellow Zoological Gardens near Minnehaha Falls. It opened in 1907, run by colorful entrepreneur Robert “Fish” Jones next to his house (a replica of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, Mass.).

After Jones died, his zoo closed and the St. Paul parks commissioner arranged for 200 of the animals — including Lindy, the popular polar bear — to go to the Como Zoo in 1935.

“Now we had a zoo of some substance,” Manship wrote.

Como still didn’t have regular funding, however. While Jones’ son paid to feed his father’s former beasts, Como zookeeper William McMahon scrounged for food for the rest.

“He begged feed for his animals from wholesalers, commission men, packing plants and feed companies, using their surplus or outdated merchandise,” Manship wrote of her father.

In the meantime, donated animals kept coming, including an alligator from state Sen. Charles Hausler.

“By this time, many other offers had to be turned down because of lack of quarters for housing,” Manship wrote.

In those early days, McMahon would move the animals inside the Conservatory during winter months to keep them warm. He would also often bring them home — keeping lion cubs in the garage and enlisting his wife as veterinarian to baby owls and sick Rhesus monkeys.

During the 1930s, the federal Works Project Administration funded construction of the zoo’s first main buildings and habitats, including rock dens for the bears and “Monkey Island.” The island, inspired by a Chicago World’s Fair exhibit, used a moat to separate monkeys from the public.

Manship recalled days of escaping monkeys (“On one of their excursions, they had a royal good time taking the clothespins out of a neighboring woman’s freshly hung wash and pelting her with apples they stole from her tree,” she wrote) and other close encounters.

In the decades that followed, the zoo rebounded from near closure twice, debuted its Sparky sea lion show and dealt with a gorilla escape. During the 1950s, it ran a mobile zoo that made school visits and became known for animals like Toby the Galapagos tortoise, which gave rides to children.

The zoo built a perimeter fence in 1972 after a visitor fell into Whitey the polar bear’s enclosure after midnight. St. Paul police shot and killed the bear to save the man. (“I sobered up real quick after I saw the bear on top of David,” his friend told the Minneapolis Star.)

People called the zoo upset that the bear had been killed, the Star wrote.

Perhaps the biggest change came in 1978, however, when the Minnesota Zoo opened in Apple Valley.

“For the first time in 80 years, the phrase ‘Let’s go to the zoo’ no longer necessarily meant Como in St. Paul,” the Minneapolis Tribune wrote. “Suddenly, Como is the ‘other zoo.‘”

By the 1980s, Como Zoo was working to move all of its animals out of cages and into new buildings and larger enclosures, dramatically reshaping the facility.

More recently, in 2021, Como built a new home for its seals and sea lions, replacing the old Monkey Island.

The 1937 main building still stands, however, flanked by the now-empty cages that once housed most of the zoo’s animals before modern habitats and enclosures were built. It is home to administrative offices.

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