The Griffith Park Zoo, or the Old Los Angeles Zoo, is the original zoo of Los Angeles, California. It was abandoned decades ago in 1966 so the new zoo could be built. Nowadays, it's been used for hiking and picnics.
Description[]
Griffith Park is a large urban park on Crystal Springs Drive, south on Interstate 5 towards the city. It contains winding roads, rolling golf courses and thick groves of eucalyptus. The zoo entrance is up a gravel service road hill and near a stand of yuccas, a small sign read OLD LOS ANGELES ZOO. Below the top of the ridge spread the ruins of the zoo. They included overgrown sidewalks, crumbling cement walls, rusty cages and man-made caves filled with debris. A bear pit resembled a grimy cement bowl covered with dried leaves and litter.
The Trials of Apollo[]
The Burning Maze[]
Crest guides Apollo, Meg McCaffrey and Grover Underwood to the zoo to find the closet entrance to the heart of the Burning Maze where Herophile is being held captive. Grover hated this place as he can still feel the emotions of the animals that were here. When Crest guides them to a bear pit, he finds that the entrance to the maze is gone, he says that Amax must've heard his conversation with Screamer. Remembering how he opened the Door of Orpheus, Grover plays Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ on his Reed Pipes to reveal a steep set of rough-hewn stairs. Crest stayed behind to watch the exit and practice his chords; he was no fighter.
But Crest was eventually kidnapped and killed by Medea. After killing her and rescuing Herophile, the group, joined by Piper McLean and the Meliai, encounter Incitatus and a dozen Pandai. The horse reveals that Caligula was sailing towards Camp Jupiter in the Bay Area. They were going to catch up to him but were all killed by the Meliai.
Trivia[]
- The zoo was originally built as an ostrich farm by Griffith J. Griffith, who donated the land to Los Angelos to make the park after he obtained a fortune from a mining syndicate in the 1880s. In the mid 1920s, William Nicholas Selig tried to make it into an animal theme park by donating many animals from his studio.