The Detroit Belle Isle Zoo

 I don't normally take pictures of ruins.  Typically they degenerate to ruin porn.  It seems like they are just pictures to take pictures of the ruins and nothing else.

Recently I heard that there was a plan to rehabilitate the zoo.  I was wondering how they would do that because last I remember it was pretty close to being gone.  So for that reason, I wanted to get some shots of it with my drone since I can't actually wander around inside. 

The Belle Isle Zoo opened in 1895 and it had a bear and a few deer.  Over the years, it was grown.

In 1941, control of it was passed to the Detroit Zoo.

This would have been one of the ticket windows.

I'm not sure what this was but it was near the front of the zoo.

In 1956, many of the animals were moved to the Royal Oak Zoo and this would become a children's zoo.

In 1980, it would become Safariland.  I assume at that point, it was given it's current configuration.

I remember visiting there in there in the early 1990s.  It had elevated walkways and you looked down into the enclosures.

I think in many ways it would be a sign of zoos to come as the animals were in mostly natural settings.

This is still the entrance.

Some of the buildings near the front of the zool.

You can see one of the walkways here.  The zoo pretty much looks overrun by the plant life there.

I think if you look closely here, you can see boards missing and stuff.

You can see one of the bridges here, I don't think I would want to cross it unless it was fixed.

In 2002, it was closed by the Detroit Zoo.  Declining revenue at both meant that one of them had to be closed.  It's kind of a shame.  This would be a nice place to have an elephant enclosure or something else that requires quite a bit of space.

If they were to rebuild this, I'm not sure what they would do with it.  I can't imagine they would turn it back into a zoo though.  That seems like it would be alot of work.  It also seems like it would be something would compete with the "zoo" at the end of the island.

I could imagine them turning it into either nature trails or a campground.  Nature trails would probably require less work but a campground would be nice.