Benson's Wild Animal Farm
was a long-running private zoo and amusement park in Hudson, New
Hampshire
. It closed in 1987, after having been
renamed New England Playworld for its final year. The state of New
Hampshire acquired the property in 1989, and transferred it to the
town of Hudson in 2009
[212592].
History
The zoo was founded by John Benson in 1924 as an animal-training
center, and was opened to the public in 1926 with animal exhibits,
a miniature train, games and exhibits.
John
Benson's career started at Lexington Park in Lexington,
Massachusetts
in the late 1800s. Although he was not the
owner, he ran the amusement park, which was filled with all sorts
of exotic animals, a theater, a women's resting building and other
facilities. The women's resting house remains and is now a home.
At the
time trolley took Bostonians
from Massachusetts Avenue to
Bedford Street and dropped them off at the park's entrance, located
on the Lexington and Bedford
town line. The park finally closed in
1921.
Benson then went to New Hampshire to open his own animal park.
After opening to the public in 1926, Benson's was expanded in
1932-33 with the addition of a permanent Wild Animal Circus. A
special "Jungle Train" ran from Boston to Hudson on Sundays, with
admission to Benson's included in the ticket price. By 1934 the
parking lot could accommodate 5,200 cars. In 1940 animal trainer
Joe Arcaris began his association with the zoo, performing acts
with lions and other animals till the late 1970s.
Benson
died in 1943, and Boston
Garden
Corp. bought the property the next year. The
park was closed to the public during
WWII, and re-opened in 1945. Starting in the
1960s, it went into a period of decline in maintenance and
attendance. It was sold in 1979 to Arthur Provencher, who reversed
its decline for a while with an influx of money. Although many
people tried to convince Arthur to develop the property into a
large paved amusement park, he was determined to preserve its
status as an animal farm, with its primary focus being the animals,
and not amusement rides. His main interest was always the beauty of
the animals, which had inspired him for most of his life. However,
the farm remained unprofitable.
Toward the end of its existence as a zoo, it had a wide variety of
animals, including trained lions, bears of several different
species, llamas, a gorilla, elephants, monkeys, and many kinds of
birds. With declining finances in the 1980s, the park added
features to add family interest. After an unsuccessful association
with outside investors, Provencher filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in
1985. In 1987, in a final effort to save the park, he changed it to
an amusement park, whose full name was "New England's Playworld
Amusement Park and Zoo," notable for a huge statue of
Mighty Mouse. This change failed to stem the
decline, and the park went out of business at the end of the 1987
season.
Since 2001 there have been efforts by local people to restore the
grounds as a park.
Colossus the gorilla
Colossus, a 500-pound
silverback who was
called one of the largest gorillas ever held in captivity, once ran
for president in the
New Hampshire
primary as a publicity stunt. He is included among serious
candidates and presidents on a "presidential primary trading cards"
collection authorized by the state library.
Colossus
moved to the Cincinnati
Zoo
in 1993, after spending some time at the "ZOO" in
Gulf Breeze, Florida. He died April 11, 2006, at age 40,
while under anesthesia during dental work.
In popular culture
- In Dane Cook's Rough Around the
Edges, the author states that when he was a kid his dad always
promised to take him to Benson's.
References
- Goldsack, Bob. Remembering Benson's Wild Animal Farm.
Nashua, Midway Publications. 1998. ISBN 1-880545-05-5.
- Jasper, Laurie. Images of America-Hudson, NH. Arcadia
Publishers, 1999.
External links
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