Founded in 1893, the St. Augustine Alligator Farm is one of Florida's oldest zoological attractions. For over a century, it has entertained millions of visitors, lured by the awesome presence of captive reptiles, long regarded in the popular imagination as at once mysterious, dangerous and frightening. A true piece of Floridana, the St. Augustine Alligator Farm has inspired popularization of the alligator in the national consciousness and helped to fashion an image for the state.

In recognition of the unique historical contributions which the Alligator Farm has made to the visitor industry in Florida and St. Augustine, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This is the story of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm's origins and its role of educating and entertaining visitors to Florida and St. Augustine.

In the early 1880s, two men began collecting alligators they found on Anastasia Island. These individuals, George Reddington and Felix Fire, were the founders of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm at South Beach.

By the end of the new century's first decade, the Alligator Farm had become an established Florida attraction. Advertisements placed by the South Beach Railway Company promoted the attraction as a desirable destination for tourists taking the Anastasia Island tram. The St. Augustine Record boasted that as a vacation spot, the Alligator Farm, Burning Spring Museum, and pavilion at South Beach compared favorably with any city the size of St. Augustine.

Guides to the city and area published after 1909 invariably included a reference to the Alligator Farm. The St. Augustine, St. Johns County Illustrated, a 1911 guide published for businessmen and visitors, contained an advertisement describing the South Beach facility as the largest alligator farm in the world. According to the publication, the attraction also offered a "complete collection" of deadly snakes found in Florida, and animals from many parts of the state. The magazine numbered the alligators exhibited at the farm in the hundreds. A subsequent guide to the city, issued in 1916, said that the attraction contained thousands of the reptiles.

During WWI, thousands of soldiers were stationed near the city, a harbinger of a later time and another war when St. Augustine's visitors would add an important chapter to the Alligator Farm story. When the war ended, many veterans decided to return to Florida, joining hundreds of thousands of other Americans in creating the Great Florida Land boom of the 1920s.

In September 1920, the height of the east coast summer storm season, a "northeaster" washed out the railway tracks near South Beach, isolating the area and its attractions. The following December, a fire destroyed the pavilion and several nearby cottages. Only through the strenuous efforts of firefighters were the Alligator Farm and Burning Spring Museum saved. This respite was short. Just four months later, in April 1921, these too went up in flames, along with Felix Fire's apartment and the original stockade surrounding the alligator pens.

Fortunately, as if anticipating the string of unfortunate events, the owners had already taken steps to relocate the Alligator Farm. The entrepreneurs selected a ten-acre tract of land two miles north of South Beach, closer to the city of St. Augustine proper, but still on Anastasia Island. The new location was not far from the lighthouse, a conspicuous landmark frequented by tourists and picnickers, around which a residential subdivision had recently begun to develop. Within a few days of the great September storm that washed out the tram tracks, the newspaper was able to report "splendid progress" in construction of the new quarters for the Alligator Farm and its denizens.

About 1934, Reddington purchased Fire's interest in the Alligator Farm. Fire continued to work at the attraction as curator. A skilled taxidermist, he prepared the specimens for the museum's exhibits and gift store, a role he continued almost to the time of his death in 1953. Reddington and his wife Nellie continued to manage the attraction until 1937 when they sold it to a pair of young business men in the community: W.I. Drysdale and F. Charles Usina.

Hardworking and aggressive businessmen, Drysdale and Usina succeeded in winning a reputation for the Alligator Farm that extended beyond the confines of St. Augustine and the boundaries of Florida. They promoted the facility locally and nationally, capitalizing on the public's fascination with the alligator to a degree their predecessors had not.

The attraction, which the two partners had acquired in early 1937, consisted of a wood frame building containing offices, a gift shop and the entrance to the exhibits. There were also the alligator pens that held an unknown number of reptiles, additional animal and bird displays, and several acres of undeveloped land. Within months of their purchase, disaster once again struck the Alligator Farm when a fire of unknown origin destroyed the main building of the complex.

Drysdale and Usina set up a temporary entrance and gift store while beginning a search of financing. Within three months, they announced plans for the construction of a new building that would contain offices, a taxidermy shop, a gift store and the entrance to the attraction.

Drysdale and Usina also began to improve the exhibits. The Campbell acquisition, made shortly after Drysdale and Usina took over the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, gave them specimens from the three oldest alligator attractions in Florida. In the following years, they acquired collections from the North Miami Zoo, the Daytona Beach Alligator Farm, the Daytona Airport Zoo and the Florida Museum of Natural History. The attraction became more than an alligator farm, for it included ostriches, crocodiles, Galapagos Tortoises, a variety of monkeys and birds, and many examples of Florida wildlife. The museum also contained a number of mounted marine and terrestrial specimens.

The opportunity for useful research at the Alligator Farm resulted in a large measure from the fact that it contained the three oldest collections of the species in existence, permitting observation of reptiles that had been living in a controlled environment for decades.

The results of the scientific research and basic facts about the reptiles collected at the Alligator Farm were published in trade journals, scientific publications, and popular magazines, including Nature, Herpetologica, Future, Florida Wildlife and many more. The first citation found in a notable scientific journal with a St. Augustine Alligator Farm byline was a photographic description of the alligator that appeared in a 1911 issue of the National Geographic.

Greater public exposure was achieved through the popular media. Magazines such as The American Weekly and The Saturday Evening Post, the latter a staple item in the reading diet of Americans during the 1940s and 1950s, carried articles about the attraction. Newspapers such as the New York Times and the Toronto Star described it. Publicity about the Alligator Farm was also broadcast to a national audience on television programs that included "What's my Line?" and "We the People" and in documentary films produced by Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.

The attention which the Alligator Farm focused on the alligator, contributed to public awareness about the plight of the creatures in the 1960s and 1970s, when the species came perilously close to extinction.

Typical of public educational programs benefiting conservation measures was a National Geographic television program, "The Realm of the Alligator", produced in the late 1980s in cooperation with the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. It was one of the most popular shows developed by the National Geographic Society.

The stability achieved by the St. Augustine Alligator Farm in the decades immediately following World War II brought about a growing institutional maturity and permitted greater sophistication in the educational and entertainment programs that it offered to the public. The research conducted at the farm reached higher levels of academic involvement in the 1970s when scientists at the University of Florida began work on the grounds and, literally, in the waters of the Alligator Farm. Dr. Elliot Jacobson of the University's School of Veterinary Science and Dr. Walter Auffenberg of the Florida State Museum in Gainesville made intensive scientific studies of alligators at the farm. Dr. Kent Vliet, whose research on the courtship habits of the alligator led to his thesis, became a virtual fixture at the facility.

Development of the Alligator Farm in recent decades has accompanied changes in management. W.I. Drysdale continued to operate the facility for several years after the death of his friend and business associate, F. Charles Usina in 1966. In the early 1970s, however, management of the farm was assumed by Drysdale's son, David.

A nature trail was added to the park in the late 1970s. At the same time, the quality of exhibits offered to visitors continued to improve as the collection grew and the presentations acquired greater polish. A roofed theater and an open amphitheater were constructed for formal exhibitions of snakes and alligators that included lectures on the reptiles' habits and behavior. The cooperation of the Florida Audubon Society was obtained in the improvement and expansion of the rookery that is home to wild and unconfined herons, ibis and egrets.

In 1989, The American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (AZA) extended accreditation to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm, thereby elevating the institution to a select list of facilities throughout the nation recognized for the quality of their collections and the care afforded them.

In 1993 the park was expanded to include "Land of Crocodiles". Here, all 23 species of the worlds' crocodilians are exhibited in individual habitats. Improvements have been made in exhibit designs throughout the park.

In 2001 the Anastasia Island Conservation Center was opened. This facility contains a meeting hall for small groups, and a kitchen. It is used for various functions such as birthday parties, receptions, community meetings and school groups.

It is also home to the AZA's Crocodilian Biology and Captive Management School, which is part of its Professional Development Program.

The St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park is a successful example of a small, privately owned specialized zoo.