The Racine Zoo was founded on March 1, 1923, by local businessman Jacob Stoffel, Jr. His donation of three monkeys spurred the city of Racine to build a small zoo in
Island Park. By the end of that year, the zoo featured
deer,
badgers,
gray foxes, and
Rocky Mountain goats. After it outgrew the space, the zoo's current location at Goold Street and North Main Street, opened in 1925. The site had previously been part of Lakeview Park, which was a former
brickyard. The Racine Zoo quickly grew in its new location. Between 1925 and 1929, it added exhibits featuring
sea lions,
hoofed animals, and
bears. A
duck pond was created by flooding an abandoned clay quarry. During the
Great Depression, the zoo's free admission allowed it to thrive while others were forced to close. The castle-like Vanishing Kingdom, which houses
big cats and
primates, was completed in 1939. It was built using bricks from the former county jail. On May 23, 1958, Mary Heibner, a ten-year-old girl from
Waukegan, Illinois, was mauled by a bear at the zoo. She nearly lost her right arm and required plastic surgery. In November 1959, due to overcrowding, the
Como Park Zoo relocated a two-year-old
Siberian tiger to Racine. The Racine Zoo purchased the tiger, named Kahn, the following year. On May 13, 1985, 35
ducks,
geese and
swans living in the zoo's duck pond were put down after the zoo was hit by a plague of
duck viral enteritis. In November of that year, the zoo became the host of the
Kiwanis-Wheary Lights, an annual holiday light display. The lights were the creation of George H. and Jessie May Wheary, who held the display at their home in
North Bay from 1962 to 1982. The lights were shown in Monument Square until Kiwanis became the owner of the lights. The Australian division of
S.C. Johnson & Son, whose headquarters are in Racine, gifted six
kangaroos and six
wallaroos to the zoo in 1987. Australian ambassador
Rawdon Dalrymple attended the ceremony. In the early 1990s, the Racine Zoo was both praised and criticized for its "old-fashioned" style of keeping animals, in small barred cages where zoo visitors could get unusually close to them. The City of Racine paid for about half of the zoo's $3 million renovation efforts in 1992, replacing the habitats which were at that time mostly unchanged from the zoo's original construction in the 1930s. In May 1996, the zoo acquired Moon Shadow, a seven-year-old Asian
snow leopard. The leopard died in December. The zoo operated as a free-admission attraction until January 1, 2007, when fiscal needs required the introduction of an admission fee. On February 10, 2011, Julie, the oldest
patas monkey in recorded history, died at the Racine Zoo, where she had been born and spent almost all of her life. She was euthanized at the age of 28. On October 1, 2019, the Racine Zoo partnered with Zigong Lantern Group in order to hold its first annual lantern festival – the largest event the zoo had ever undertook. The festival included over 300 hand-made lanterns and featured a 140-foot dragon. ==Animals==