Dickerson Park Zoo celebrating 100th birthday with proclamation and party on Saturday

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) – The Dickerson Park Zoo celebrates its 100th birthday on Saturday with a proclamation and enjoyable ahead of and after.

The Zoo will host the proclamation in the zoo’s amphitheater at 11 a.m. on Saturday. Springfield Mayor Ken McClure and Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe are a several of the dignitaries who will show up at.

PR and Advertising Director for the zoo, Joey Powell, suggests the party will be a mix of exciting and serious.

“It is a wonderful mix of pomp and circumstance ceremony. And then just a carnival-like environment is seriously what we’re heading for,” said Powell.

From 10 a.m. to midday, the Zoo will be keeping a carnival-like occasion with nearby sporting activities mascots, experience portray, magic, and far more. Young ones can love the pleasurable.

“For the young children, we’re going to have a bounce residence, a encounter painter,” explained Powell. “This complete location will be lined with booths with people from Louis and Fetch with the Springfield Cardinals to Boomer Bear, Ozzie the Eagle, Kicker from Sports Town, Star Wars figures, just all forms of factors likely on.”

The zoo is loaded in historical past. The city of Springfield obtained the zoo in 1922. It opened in 1923.

“So 100 a long time back is when the city acquired the land 100 acres from the estate of Jerome Dickerson in 1922. The city zoo was truly at Phelps Grove Park. And in 1923, it moved here. There really had been a zoo on the web page even prior to that. So the heritage even goes back the historical past of Dickerson Park Zoo is 100 years old, but the zoo alone goes back into the 1800s,” stated Powell.

Powell suggests the zoo celebration is all about exciting but also about commemorating the progress that it is built in excess of the very last 100 a long time.

“One of the most large issues to me has been the improvements in animal husbandry, the way that we have cared for animals, and the issues that we have discovered, just like anything. Just think of what we have acquired in the earlier 100 a long time and innovations and just in technological innovation in drugs in each and every industry,” explained Powell.

Powell hopes that far more persons carry on to enjoy the zoo about the upcoming 100 decades.

“My personalized goal is I want Dickerson Park Zoo to be in the major 5 of issues men and women assume what may possibly I do now or what may well we do this weekend? I want them to imagine of Dickerson Park Zoo and just really for the city of Springfield to just get at the rear of this zoo,” explained Powell.

All through tomorrow’s pleasurable, everybody gets to be a kid. Admission will be just $12, which is normally the value of children’s admission. The zoo opens at 9 a.m.

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