The Denver Zoo is an 80-acre zoological garden that is situated in Denver's City Park in Colorado. It was established in 1896 and is part-funded by the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District. It is owned by the City and County of Denver. In the Denver metropolitan area, it receives the most paid visitors. An orphaned American black bear was donated to the Denver Zoo, which then opened its doors.

Bear Mountain became the first zoo in the US to use ecological zoo enclosures rather than cages with bars after it was built. It developed this idea further with Predator Ridge, which has three distinct zones through which animals are rotated so that their overlapping odours give environmental enrichment, and Primate Panorama, which includes enormous mesh tents and open areas for apes and monkeys. Five sections make up Toyota Elephant Passage, which opened on June 1, 2012, and rotates the different species through them. The Denver Zoo is a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums and has earned accreditation from that organization.

The Denver Zoo is an 80-acre zoological garden that is situated in Denver's City Park in Colorado. It was established in 1896 and is part-funded by the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District. It is owned by the City and County of Denver. In the Denver metropolitan area, it receives the most paid visitors.

An orphaned American black bear was donated to the Denver Zoo, which then opened its doors. Bear Mountain became the first zoo in the US to use ecological zoo enclosures rather than cages with bars after it was built.

When an orphaned American black bear cub named Billy Bryan, short for William Jennings Bryan after the current American politician, was delivered as a gift to Thomas S. McMurry (mayor of Denver from 1895–1899), the Denver Zoo was established in 1896. McMurry delivered the difficult-to-control cub to Alexander J. Graham, the keeper of City Park, who used it to launch the zoo. Other species in the fledgling zoo included local waterfowl at Duck Lake, local prairie dogs, antelope that roamed the park, and a flock of Chinese pheasants that later filled the state's eastern plains.

Only one significant improvement was made to Denver Zoo between 1918 and 1950, in contrast to other zoos in the area that made considerable use of New Deal monies to modernize their facilities. The Works Progress Administration provided funding for the construction of Monkey Island in 1937. The zoo received relatively little funding from Mayor Benjamin F. Stapleton, and by the time Mayor Quigg Newton was elected in 1947, it was in poor shape.

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