SoCal Attractions in Photos - kcet.org

4 August 2011

California Alligator Farm

In Jurassic Park, author Michael Crichton and filmmaker Steven Spielberg imagined an amusement park designed to showcase Mesozoic-era reptiles. Their imagined park had a real-life antecedent in Los Angeles in the form of Lincoln Heights' California Alligator Farm, a gated, exotic zoo where the chief attractions were the bone-crushing "living fossils" that have persisted on Earth relatively unchanged since the Age of Dinosaurs.

The brainchild of Francis Earnest and Joe Campbell, the California Alligator Farm opened in 1907 near the intersection of Mission Road and Lincoln Park Avenue. Earnest and Campbell segregated the alligators by size to discourage cannibalistic behavior, but they remarkably did not separate the gators from their human visitors. As the photos below show, Alligator Farm visitors—including young children—were encouraged to walk or swim among the dangerous reptiles.

If close encounters with the gators wasn't enough, various attractions kept visitors entertained. Alligators climbed to the top of a chute and then took a belly-slide to the pool below. Tourists could also climb aboard a saddled Billy the Alligator—whose gaping jaws appeared in dozens of Hollywood films—for a ride around the farm. The park's operators also staged spectacles such as alligator wrestling and the feeding of live chickens to the gators.

In 1953, the California Alligator Farm relocated to Buena Park, across the street from Knott's Berry Farm. The park closed in 1984, plagued by declining attendance.

1911 postcard from the California Alligator Farm in Lincoln Heights. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection.

Women dine in a pond filled with alligators at the California Alligator Farm. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection.

Exterior of the California Alligator Farm building. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection.

A uniformed park worker tickles the underside of an alligator's mouth. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.

Postcard from the California Alligator Farm, circa 1907. Courtesy of the Werner Von Boltenstern Postcard Collection, Department of Archives and Special Collections, Loyola Marymount University Library.

A young child has a close encounter with the alligators at the California Alligator Farm. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection.