Mill Mountain Zoo

When it opened in 1952, the zoo on Mill Mountain bore the shoe from "There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" at its entrance. The schoolhouse from "Mary Had a Little Lamb" stood near exhibits of native Appalachian animals and prairie dogs brought from Texas. The city — a railroad boomtown that grew twenty-two times in the 1880s after Norfolk and Western chose Big Lick as its headquarters — had built itself around iron and movement, and the children's zoo on the ridgeline above downtown opened as a small collection threaded through nursery-rhyme structures. The location made expansion impossible. In 1984, a proposal emerged to relocate the zoo to a 400-acre tract adjacent to the Blue Ridge Parkway, to be called the Blue Ridge Zoo. The plan was abandoned in favor of developing Virginia's Explore Park at that site. The newly-established Blue Ridge Zoological Society voted in 1988 to keep the zoo permanently atop Mill Mountain. A 10-year master plan called Zoo 2001 was completed in 1991, with some of its suggestions implemented over the following decade. The zoo was accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums from 1995 to 2016. The AZA declined to renew accreditation due to the zoo's financial situation but affirmed the zoo continued to excel in general operation and animal welfare. Since 2019, the zoo has held accreditation through the Zoological Association of America. Today the zoo is home to 85 animals among 35 species, including red pandas and one critically endangered species: the red wolf. Red wolves are protected under a program called SAFE — Saving Animals From Extinction. Captive red wolves are managed as a single population across facilities throughout the country, with transfers coordinated to maintain genetic diversity. In June 2021, the zoo completed its largest capital project in three decades and added a black bear, heritage goats, and hogs. Ruby was a Siberian tiger donated to the zoo by law enforcement officers who found her being kept illegally as a pet in Danville. She lived at the zoo from November 1988 until her death on December 10, 2006. Her habitat has since been converted for wolves. Go for the red wolf exhibit. Go because a city built by railroad iron kept a ridgetop zoo when it could have moved it, and because the wolves you see here are part of a coordinated effort to pull a species back from extinction.