by Sandra Fikes

Created on: July 07, 2009   Last Updated: October 09, 2010

As an Alaskan I take great pride in our zoo, however, I also must admit that I was not exactly impressed with my first visit to the Alaska Zoo. You see, when I was a child, my parents took us to the San Diego Zoo on a regular basis. How could memories of such a magnificent and large zoo as the 100 acre San Diego Zoo ever be topped by the struggling efforts of a zoo that was, quite literally, a quarter the size?

I was not sure what to expect as my nephew and I walked the rustic trails of the Alaska Zoo, and I was a bit disappointed when I saw cages. Zoos were places for people to see how animals live in the wild weren't they? It was a naive perception, one i am happy to say the Alaska Zoo has changed for me. You see, the Alaska Zoo is a special kind of zoo that is so unlike other zoos I had encountered. When you walk down the rustic trails it seems as though there has been some kind of slip in the design. The trails are wild and the cages are... obvious. Perhaps that obviousness is what prompted an Australian to want to get closer to the polar bears one fateful day in 1994. Yes, it is not easy to photograph the animals in a way that they appear to be in the wild, but the animals would know they were not in the wild no matter what their enclosure looked like. Would they not? The Alaska Zoo is, in spirit and purpose, more for the animals than for the humans. While the Alaska Zoo bears the name 'zoo' it is more a visitor friendly rehabilitation center for the wild and orphaned wildlife of Alaska.

The Alaska Zoo has been a home to rescued and orphaned animals since its start in 1969 as the Alaska Children's Zoo. Annabelle, a two-year-old female Asian elephant, came to Alaska in 1966 when a Fairbanks grocer and an Anchorage supermarket owner, Jack Snyder of S & N Foodland, collaborated to win the grand prize of a Chiffon Tissue contest. "$3,000 or a baby elephant"* for the retailer ordering the most paper products that year. (*: some sources say it was $3,500, and that the baby elephant was 4 years old.)

Of course, to keep an elephant in Alaska, you need to keep the elephant warm. Thus entered Mrs. Sammye Seawell of Anchorage, the only one in Alaska at the time to have a heated horse barn. So, the little elephant moved to the Diamond H horse ranch in Anchorage. Annabelle was an instant celebrity who attracted a lot of attention, so much attention that in 1968 Mrs. Seawell led a group of supporters in forming a non-profit corporation and in 1969 the Alaska Children's

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