New England Trip - July 2023

Pleistohorse

Pleistohorse

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
I’ve just made a short excursion to New England for a family event. To make the trip worthwhile I added a few days to visit a few zoos and museums. I visited 10 zoos and two museums. Two of the zoos were first time visits, as was one of the museums. The others I have visited off and on for the last 45 years or so.

I missed some that’ll have to wait until next time:
The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk
Woods Hole Science Aquarium
Livingston Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy
Capron Park Zoo
Blue Hills Trailside Museum
Stamford Nature Center and Museum
Berkshires Museum
MacMillan Perry Museum of Arctic Exploration
Harvard Museum of Natural History
Museum of Science
New England Aquarium
Charmingfare Farm
Squam Lake Natural Science Center
York’s Wild Kingdom
Maine Wildlife Park
DEW Haven

Truthfully the only ones I had hope of visiting this trip were York’s Wild Kingdom, Maine Wildlife Park, Blue Hills Trailside Museum, and the Maritime Aquarium. Had this been a genuine Roadtrip instead of me just returning to my home base in central Connecticut each night, I would have picked them up and a couple of museums too. Maybe next year when I’ll definitely be back to visit the Peabody Museum of Natural History following its renovations and also commence on a long overdue visit to my home state of Maine.

That said I was able to visit the following:

Buttonwood Park Zoo (photos posted) - an outstanding example of a small city park zoo.
New Bedford Whaling Museum - a near miss great museum.
Roger Williams Park Zoo - New England’s Zoo right next to a very busy highway.
Roger Williams Park Natural History Museum - missing about three classic Dioramas long since destroyed I imagine.
Mystic Aquarium - nearly perfect historic and if I say so mythic institution.
Beardsley Zoo - some very good features…needs to improve the exhibits of its Asian wildlife.
Action Wildlife Foundation and Museum - hmmmm…about ok with a museum reminiscent of a Bass Pro Shop or Cabela’s store.
Southwick’s Zoo - New England’s Great Zoo carrying the legacy of the Catskill Game Farm and Benson’s Wild Animal Park and updating the model to the modern age. I’m saying this place is AZA worthy. Beautiful grounds…silly amusments. Great restaurant.
Stone Zoo - Small Zoo with several really nice features.
Franklin Park Zoo - Zoo New England…actually a pretty good assortment of African wildlife and much improved exhibits.
Lupa Zoo (ugh…smells of urine, tastes of dust, I might have picked up fleas and depression - a couple small reasonably respectable features…but over-all? Just because you want a zoo…)
The Zoo in Forest Park - what Lupa Zoo could be if it tried a bit harder, it’s just a step above the City Park Zoos I remember from my childhood and probably very beautiful in the fall.

As I travel back to Alaska, I’ll work on my photos and post some thoughts about each facility.
 
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Pleistohorse said:
I’ve just made a short excursion to New England for a family event. To make the trip worthwhile I added a few days to visit a few zoos and museums. I visited 10 zoos and two museums. Two of the zoos were first time visits, as was one of the museums. The others I have visited off and on for the last 45 years or so.

I missed some that’ll have to wait until next time:
The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk
Woods Hole Science Aquarium
Livingston Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy
Capron Park Zoo
Blue Hills Trailside Museum
Stamford Nature Center and Museum
Berkshires Museum
MacMillan Perry Museum of Arctic Exploration
Harvard Museum of Natural History
Museum of Science
New England Aquarium
Charmingfare Farm
Squam Lake Natural Science Center
York’s Wild Kingdom
Maine Wildlife Park
DEW Haven

Truthfully the only ones I had hope of visiting this trip were York’s Wild Kingdom, Maine Wildlife Park, Blue Hills Trailside Museum, and the Maritime Aquarium. Had this been a genuine Roadtrip instead of me just returning to my home base in central Connecticut each night, I would have picked them up and a couple of museums too. Maybe next year when I’ll definitely be back to visit the Peabody Museum of Natural History following its renovations and also commence on a long overdue visit to my home state of Maine.

That said I was able to visit the following:

Buttonwood Park Zoo (photos posted) - an outstanding example of a small city park zoo.
New Bedford Whaling Museum - a near miss great museum.
Roger Williams Park Zoo - New England’s Zoo right next to a very busy highway.
Roger Williams Park Natural History Museum - missing about three classic Dioramas long since destroyed I imagine.
Mystic Aquarium - nearly perfect historic and if I say so mythic institution.
Beardsley Zoo - some very good features…needs to improve the exhibits of its Asian wildlife.
Action Wildlife Foundation and Museum - hmmmm…about ok with a museum reminiscent of a Bass Pro Shop or Cabela’s store.
Southwick’s Zoo - New England’s Great Zoo carrying the legacy of the Catskill Game Farm and Benson’s Wild Animal Park and updating the model to the modern age. I’m saying this place is AZA worthy. Beautiful grounds…silly amusments. Great restaurant.
Stone Zoo - Small Zoo with several really nice features.
Franklin Park Zoo - Zoo New England…actually a pretty good assortment of African wildlife and much improved exhibits.
Lupa Zoo (ugh…smells of urine, tastes of dust, I might have picked up fleas and depression - a couple small reasonably respectable features…but over-all? Just because you want a zoo…)
The Zoo in Forest Park - what Lupa Zoo could be if it tried a bit harder, it’s just a step above the City Park Zoos I remember from my childhood and probably very beautiful in the fall.

As I travel back to Alaska, I’ll work on my photos and post some thoughts about each facility.
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Surprised you didn't stop at Ripley Waterfowl, it's right by Action Wildlife. I only went to Action because I was early meeting a friend at Ripley.
 
Sounds like a great trip! Maine is obviously not known for zoological institutions but if you find yourself heading up the coast, the Maine State Aquarium will be reopening next year after a huge renovation and the Mt Desert Oceanarium and the Dorr Museum are both worth a peek.
 
Photos have been posted of each facility I visited during my short week in New England. I was based out of Bristol, CT and in between family obligations and hours of operation visited facilities in three states (returning to Bristol each night).

Some genuine highlights:

Buttonwood Park: Bird Song. Everywhere, bird song.
Roger Williams Park: A great view of an Asiatic Black Bear in a well planted and naturalistic exhibit.
Roger Williams Natural History Museum: Like the small Alaska Museum of Natural History…a great collection of local birds.
Mystic Aquarium: Hearing the keeper telling visitors they would have to travel all the way to Alaska to view another exhibit of captive Steller Sea Lions.
Action Wildlife: Seeing Red Deer beneath a beautiful blue Litchfield County sky and witnessing a near great Water Buffalo Exhibit.
Beardsley Zoo: Watching (a glimpse really) an Andean Bear walking through its exhibit, among the high grass down the slope to an area of cover. Makes me wish I lived in Connecticut and could visit for several days in a row trying to capture some great photos of the animal.
Southwick’s Zoo: Paying my fare to help support this Zoo. Earns a neck and neck run against Roger Williams as New Englands Great Zoo. Wonderful restaurant associated with the zoo. Really diverse collection. New England’s only Rhinoceroses. Ok the actual best memory is certainly glimpsing two Elk moving through the trees beyond a small pond.
Stone Zoo: Getting the Markhor to line up for a great photo reminiscent of a small herd being viewed in a grassy meadow at the foot of inaccessible cliffs.
Franklin Park Zoo: Seeing the Condor habitat, seeing Kea, and seeing Somali Wild Asses.
Lupa Zoo: Nilgai, Munjacts, and the Highland Cattle Yard.
The Zoo in Forest Park: Walking beneath big mature trees in a gilded age city park….small zoo….I guess I’m just glad it’s there and that the standards of husbandry seem more than sufficient. I guess seeing the Leopard was my favorite moment…hearing the Coyotes howl was nice too.

The Zoo in Forest Park was only the second zoo I ever visited (the first was a small zoo in Japan when I was very young). Following the zoo in Forest Park my zoo experience over the next few years included Mystic Aquarium and small city park zoos in southern New England (this includes Roger Williams Park Zoo back in those days). Visits to Catskill Game Farm, and Benson’s Wild Animal Park in 1979 and then the Bronx Zoo (circa 1982) changed my world. Zoo wise at least.
 
The first zoo I visited was the Buttonwood Park Zoo. This is a relatively small zoo located in the expansive Buttonwood Park in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Back during the days of industry and robber barons grand parks were set aside in the small port cities and mill towns of New England.

Of these Buttonwood Park probably maintains its original character wrapped in the modern expectations of a zoo. Roger Williams (still a beautiful park) and Beardsley Zoo (a smaller, less visited park) graduated into the Zoo as a destination in and of itself category. The Zoo in Forest Park in Springfield, Massachusetts also maintains the air of something to do in the park and not the reason the park exists.

The Zoo in Forest Park doesn’t quite rise to “modern” zoo aesthetics. Beats what it used to be, but just misses the mark…so in some ways it is almost the last of its kind in the north-east. Massachusetts has a couple other small park zoos that limit themselves to domestics, tame deer, and emus. The small park zoos in Connecticut…Bates Woods Park Zoo in New London and Mohegan Park Zoo in Norwich have been reduced to ruin and memory.

Well…this post is about Buttonwood Park Zoo. It sits as you’d imagine in Buttonwood Park. Right among bordering side streets and what used to be working class neighborhoods. When I was a kid, my Uncle lived a couple blocks away and we walk down to the park and visit the open zoo. In my 9 year olds memory the Elephants and the Bears were actually outside the fenced portion of the zoo. The zoo itself in those days was sparsely planted, dusty, and open. I remember a fenced yard with wolves, a fenced yard with Rheas, cages with Leopards and Jaguars, and corn cribs of monkeys, parrots, and Raccoons. That was in 1979. The zoo went through a massive overhaul in the 1980’s. Buttonwood, Forest Park, and Stone Zoos all came very close to closing.

What a difference 44 years have made. Once you enter the zoo you face a large pond along a well treed path. Across the pond (filled with several species of native and exotic waterfowl) you’ll find a group of four Whitetail Deer and beyond that a pair of Bison behind a chain link fence that from where you view them may or may not be separating the Bison from the deer and the pond. If the animals share the space, this exhibit is one of two shared Bison and Whitetail Deer exhibits along New England’s southern coast.

Walk around the pond and you come to a small playground next to a well above average Canada Lynx enclosure. The Bobcats and Cougars further on also have decently constructed exhibits.

The zoo has spacious yards for its Whitetails, Horses, and Domestic Cattle. The zoos pair of Asian Elephants and Pudu (considering the size of the Pudu) also have large exhibits. The Red Pandas have a pretty good exhibit with plenty of climbing structures. The Black Bear (unseen) has a well planted but seemingly to me a rather small exhibit. If it were not for the Lupa Zoo, outside of Springfield, this would be the worst bear exhibit viewed.

The zoo has a small tropic house and a carousel (not quite universal in New England’s Zoos). Continue on around the circular zoo path and we find ourselves back at the entrance building and approaching the large pond and we once again see the Bison. Now unobstructed by chain link…we can see that the Bison are separated from the Whitetail Deer and the pond. At least on this day.

There is also a fairly large (if unimaginative) pool for a lone Harbor Seal (no underwater viewing area).

And again as mentioned earlier the zoo is filled with bird song, undimmed by any noise from traffic (a circumstance that plagues the River Williams Park Zoo…where the African Elephants…African Elephants (!) are nestled up against I-95).

All in all…a far cry from the dusty fenced in field I remember from the old days. A very pleasant zoo. Worth the trip if you’re in New England and you’d like to see Asian Elephants and visit the nearby Whaling Museum.
 
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Pleistohorse said:
The first zoo I visited was the Buttonwood Park Zoo. This is a relatively small zoo located in the expansive Buttonwood Park in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Back during the days of industry and robber barons grand parks were set aside in the small port cities and mill towns of New England.

Of these Buttonwood Park probably maintains its original character wrapped in the modern expectations of a zoo. Roger Williams (still a beautiful park) and Beardsley Zoo (a smaller, less visited park) graduated into the Zoo as a destination in and of itself category. The Zoo in Forest Park in Springfield, Massachusetts also maintains the air of something to do in the park and not the reason the park exists.

The Zoo in Forest Park doesn’t quite rise to “modern” zoo aesthetics. Beats what it used to be, but just misses the mark…so in some ways it is almost the last of its kind in the north-east. Massachusetts has a couple other small park zoos that limit themselves to domestics, tame deer, and emus. The small park zoos in Connecticut…Bates Woods Park Zoo in New London and Mohegan Park Zoo in Norwich have been reduced to ruin and memory.

Well…this post is about Buttonwood Park Zoo. It sits as you’d imagine in Buttonwood Park. Right among bordering side streets and what used to be working class neighborhoods. When I was a kid, my Uncle lived a couple blocks away and we walk down to the park and visit the open zoo. In my 9 year olds memory the Elephants and the Bears were actually outside the fenced portion of the zoo. The zoo itself in those days was sparsely planted, dusty, and open. I remember a fenced yard with wolves, a fenced yard with Rheas, cages with Leopards and Jaguars, and corn cribs of monkeys, parrots, and Raccoons. That was in 1979. The zoo went through a massive overhaul in the 1980’s. Buttonwood, Forest Park, and Stone Zoos all came very close to closing.

What a difference 44 years have made. Once you enter the zoo you face a large pond along a well treed path. Across the pond (filled with several species of native and exotic waterfowl) you’ll find a group of four Whitetail Deer and beyond that a pair of Bison behind a chain link fence that from where you view them may or may not be separating the Bison from the deer and the pond. If the animals share the space, this exhibit is one of two shared Bison and Whitetail Deer exhibits along New England’s southern coast.

Walk around the pond and you come to a small playground next to a well above average Canada Lynx enclosure. The Bobcats and Cougars further on also have decently constructed exhibits.

The zoo has spacious yards for its Whitetails, Horses, and Domestic Cattle. The zoos pair of Asian Elephants and Pudu (considering the size of the Pudu) also have large exhibits. The Red Pandas have a pretty good exhibit with plenty of climbing structures. The Black Bear (unseen) has a well planted but seemingly to me a rather small exhibit. If it were not for the Lupa Zoo, outside of Springfield, this would be the worst bear exhibit viewed.

The zoo has a small tropic house and a carousel (not quite universal in New England’s Zoos). Continue on around the circular zoo path and we find ourselves back at the entrance building and approaching the large pond and we once again see the Bison. Now unobstructed by chain link…we can see that the Bison are separated from the Whitetail Deer and the pond. At least on this day.

There is also a fairly large (if unimaginative) pool for a lone Harbor Seal (no underwater viewing area).

And again as mentioned earlier the zoo is filled with bird song, undimmed by any noise from traffic (a circumstance that plagues the River Williams Park Zoo…where the African Elephants…African Elephants (!) are nestled up against I-95).

All in all…a far cry from the dusty fenced in field I remember from the old days. A very pleasant zoo. Worth the trip if you’re in New England and you’d like to see Asian Elephants and visit the nearby Whaling Museum.
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Thank you for your review! Buttonwood is one of my favorite zoos in this part of the country, and I have visited twice and posted my own review a few months ago. It is also interesting to hear a little about what the zoo was like before the renovations in the 80s, as there is very little information online.

One part of the zoo I am surprised you didn’t talk more about is the new tropic house. In my opinion it is one of the zoo’s biggest highlights, and it contains a unique set of mixed-species enclosures where primates, birds, reptiles, and fish all live together. For example, on my last visit one enclosure held Nancy Ma’s Night Monkey, Golden Headed Lion Tamarin, Guira Cuckoo, Sun Conure, Hoffman’s Two-Toed Sloth, Yellow-Spotted Amazon River Turtle, Pacu, Plecos, and two other fish taxa, all living together. All the mixed-species enclosures are tall and they beautifully represent the layers of the rainforest, from the fish-filled “rivers” to the arboreal primates and the birds above. There are also rare taxa (like Nancy Ma’s Night Monkeys, which are one of my favorites). The complex isn’t perfect but in my opinion the mixed species concept plus the collection of 7 types of platyrhines makes Rainforest Rivers and Reefs a huge standout—especially in a time when most zoos are unfortunately downsizing their monkey collections.
 
Notable No Shows on the Roster of New England Zoo Specimens:

1. Orangutans
2. Nile Hippopotamuses
3. Brown Bears

Less Surprising but still notable:
4. African Wild Dogs (exhibited at the Franklin Park Zoo within the last 25 years certainly).
5. Polar Bears (in the very early 1990’s there were at least three Polar Bears on exhibit at Roger Williams Zoo, Stone Zoo, and the Ecotarium. A few years earlier there was another on exhibit at The Zoo in Forest Park).
 
The second Zoo I visited on this trip was the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island. I was also able to visit the Roger Williams Natural History Museum and the Mystic Aquarium this day…and to have Dinner with a friend in Exeter, New Hampshire and make it back to Bristol, Connecticut for a night’s rest. It was a busy day that saw me visiting four of New England’s six states!

Roger Williams Park Zoo is the second American Zoo I ever visited (again, the first being The Zoo in Forest Park). My first visit would have been early summer 1978…later that summer would be my third Zoo, a now defunct Game Farm in Houlton, Maine. What I remember from that first visit are a small fairground railroad for children, a Tapir in a tropical building right about where the current one is, and in the center plaza near where the gift shop is an old covered steel cage (about the size of a circus ring) holding Lions. It was the first time I’d seen a fully maned Lion.

There are currently no Lions at the Zoo. However, coming in through the north entrance puts you right into the Zoo’s Africa Exhibits complex. Zebras, Wildebeest, Ankole Cattle, Cheetahs, Dik-dik, Bat-eared Foxes, Red River Hogs, African Elephants, and Giraffes all come into view (or at least their signed enclosures do) as you meander up the path towards what I once upon a time considered the “main zoo.”

I believe Penguins will soon be on exhibit not far from the Giraffes, but I’m not sure if they will be an African or South American species. Either one will work as their exhibit sits roughly between the South American and African Exhibit complexes (not counting the Farm Yard Exhibit).

Once you’ve cleared Africa (or near to it) you can go left or right. I and most zoo guests it appeared went left towards a small North American Exhibit complex. Here you’ll find Bison, Red Wolves, Pronghorn (the last in New England), and roughly where the Polar Bear Exhibit used to be a spacious and well planted exhibit housing one Golden and two Bald Eagles.

On my visit the Bison were viewed from quite a distance as the zoo’s robotic dinosaur exhibit (viewable for a small extra few). The dinosaurs also put the zoo’s Muntjac off view for me. In the early 1990’s I visited the zoo during their first dinosaur exhibit and I was amazed by the creatures…so Roger Williams has some experience “exhibiting” these “creatures.”

Turning the corner from the Eagles we enter (through the back door) the zoo’s Marco Polo Trail Asian Highlands Exhibit. We view Takin, Snow Leopards, Asiatic Black Bears, Red Panda’s (under renovation I believe) and Bactrian Camels (for years the zoo’s used Dromedaries…so the Bactrians are an improvement for the zoo nerd in us). Of course large birds are also exhibited in the Africa and Asia complexes.

From here, we enter the Zoo Center. An exhibit complex of animals native to Islands the size of Australia and smaller…in addition to River Otters (which I guess from Kodiak to Long Island qualify).

The southwest corner of the zoo holds a South American Tropics Building and a few outdoor displays for South American Species. The Tropics building is open inside (for the most part…the Giant Otters and Anacondas are securely behind glass) and many guests seemed enamored at the Golden Lion Tamarins scampering overhead.

Roger Williams Zoo is often considered “New England’s Zoo.” I’d say this is roughly true (although Franklin Park Zoo comes close, especially when paired with the Stone Zoo…which technically speaking are related facilities under the same direction), the Southwick’s Zoo about 25 miles to the north gives it an honest run (in my opinion) for the title. New England is not typically considered a destination for zoo goers…but draw a line from Mystic Aquarium to New Bedford, up to Boston, back west to Worcester and south again to Mystic and within barely 100 miles wide area you have two world class aquariums and eight significant (ie accurately described as) zoos.

I’d say that the Eagle and Asiatic Black Bear exhibits are fantastic. The Giraffes do pretty well for themselves too. The only question regarding exhibit standards I had were how they Elephants might be affected with their exhibit hugging the interstate just beyond the zoo. I know Elephants have pretty amazing hearing, but in this case the traffic noise was pretty loud to me as well…in sharp contrast to the birdsong filling Buttonwood Park Zoo in New Bedford.

All in all, I enjoyed my morning at the Zoo. From there it was up the hill to the Museum and then off to Mystic.

At the gift shop (in addition to the Refrigerator Magnet which has become my default souvenir), I picked up a glass with an attached metal badge depicting a fully maned African Lion…in honor of that long ago Cat…the memory of which has never left me.
 
Pleistohorse said:
in the center plaza near where the gift shop is an old covered steel cage (about the size of a circus ring) holding Lions. It was the first time I’d seen a fully maned Lion.
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Fun Fact: The current gift shop, the oldest building in the zoo, is the former Menagerie Building that housed lions, tigers, black bears, hyenas, and more (eventually it switched to housing birds). If you look on both sides of the building, there are eight green rectangles, blocking off what used to be transfer doors between the indoor and outdoor exhibits for these animals. The male lion was in the fourth door down on the right side (the side closer to North America), directly before what is now the side entrance.
Pleistohorse said:
I believe Penguins will soon be on exhibit not far from the Giraffes, but I’m not sure if they will be an African or South American species. Either one will work as their exhibit sits roughly between the South American and African Exhibit complexes (not counting the Farm Yard Exhibit).
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The zoo is planning to get Humboldt Penguins, which is fun as it is a species returning to New England and the one the zoo had until 2013's expanded Farmyard.
Pleistohorse said:
From here, we enter the Zoo Center. An exhibit complex of animals native to Islands the size of Australia and smaller…in addition to River Otters (which I guess from Kodiak to Long Island qualify).
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The exhibit (officially named "World of Adaptations") used to be strictly Australasia, with a few species slightly more "Asia" than "Australia" (i.e. Gibbons, Chinese Alligator). However, it has gradually, slowly become less and less themed, with additions such as the North American River Otters (replacing the alligator), King Vultures (in a former walk-through aviary), and Emerald Tree Boas (mixed with snake-necked turtles). The exhibit has also long been home to Radiated Tortoises, a holdover from the zoo's old Madagascar! exhibit.
 
@Neil chace thank you for the extra information! That Lion really made an impression on me all those years ago. I can almost see the zoo in my mind, beyond my memories. Do you know if the area where the African Exhibits are currently placed was used by the zoo in the 1970’s or are those areas a result of the subsequent renovations in the 1980’s? For the life of me, I seem to remember the zoo being somewhat limited to that central plaza area. I really appreciate you taking the time adding real interest and insight to the thread.
 
Pleistohorse said:
@Neil chace thank you for the extra information! That Lion really made an impression on me all those years ago. I can almost see the zoo in my mind, beyond my memories. Do you know if the area where the African Exhibits are currently placed was used by the zoo in the 1970’s or are those areas a result of the subsequent renovations in the 1980’s? For the life of me, I seem to remember the zoo being somewhat limited to that central plaza area. I really appreciate you taking the time adding real interest and insight to the thread.
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In the 1970s the zoo was using the area at the modern entrance and Hasbro's Big Backyard as a Plains area for hoofstock until around 1986 where they started building the Africa section.
 
Pleistohorse said:
@Neil chace thank you for the extra information! That Lion really made an impression on me all those years ago. I can almost see the zoo in my mind, beyond my memories. Do you know if the area where the African Exhibits are currently placed was used by the zoo in the 1970’s or are those areas a result of the subsequent renovations in the 1980’s? For the life of me, I seem to remember the zoo being somewhat limited to that central plaza area. I really appreciate you taking the time adding real interest and insight to the thread.
Click to expand...
Smaggledagle said:
In the 1970s the zoo was using the area at the modern entrance and Hasbro's Big Backyard as a Plains area for hoofstock until around 1986 where they started building the Africa section.
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Also note that the zoo entrance used to be from the rose garden, into the area you are referring to as the "central plaza". So it's understandable you might be thinking of that as the whole zoo since it was where the entrance/exit used to be.
 
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