Would you let your child ride a full-grown 400-pound alligator?
Opened as Los Angeles Alligator Farm in 1907 by “Alligator Joe” Campbell and Francis Earnest, the California Alligator Farm was resident to over 1,000 alligators at the height of its popularity.
Originally located in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the duo moved the whole operation to the California sunshine, not coincidentally situating it in Lincoln Heights–right next to Motion Picture Studio. Along with renting gators out to film productions, the farm became one of LA’s most popular attractions.
It was a wild time in the west, with “freak-raising farms” on the rise and animal rights not yet being a hot topic. For only 25 cents, families could be entertained with fine alligator skin goods, performances, and even snag a souvenir photo of their children riding on the farm’s oldest residents.
While it seems shocking to wrap our heads around, you can see by photographs taken of the time that these days amongst the alligators were enjoyed by many residents and visitors of the area. Some alligators even performed for the visitors. One performance, for example, included one of the farm’s guides who would lasso an alligator with a rope and prompted the alligator towards a chute the reptile would slide down. Other performances included a hypnotist act.
In blatant disregard for the signs that requested visitors do not “throw stones at the alligators, spit on, punch or molest them in any way,” fraternities would sneak into the farm and get up close and personal with these reptiles.
In 1912, Mervyn L. Conner wrote a detailed description of the experience visiting the Alligator Farm, in an article published in an early 20th Century newspaper San Francisco Call . In it, Conner described that upon entering the farm, you could purchase a wide array of alligator belts, purses, and other trinkets made of the skin of alligators from the farm.
The alligators themselves were kept separated into 20 ponds according to size, ranging from a few inches to 13- feet, to avoid a horror scene in which the larger alligators chow down on the smaller ones. Conner continues, saying, “Our guide threw chunks of meat into the alligators so that we could see how they grasped it between their massive jaws and they clenched it tightly between their teeth that it could not be torn away from them.”
The writer continues by describing an adult-sized alligator, kept separate from the smaller alligators where the guide seemed a bit “wary.” Concluding the experience, Conner said the day was “pleasantly and profitably spent.”
The gators natural nocturnal screams, paired with overflowing water enabling some great escapes into local swimming pools, canals, and backyards caused a bit of a ruckus in the neighborhood. In 1956, the farm moved yet again, this time to nearby Buena Park. It is at this time that its name was changed to the more approprate California Alligator Farm.
The move marked the end of the farm’s heyday, as the novelty of mingling with reptiles faded. The farm closed its gates in 1984 due to low attendance. Now, we can only envision the potential for disaster if this Alligator Farm still existed today.
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