The Detroit Zoo isn't in Detroit — it's Royal Oak's backyard

Here’s a fact Royal Oak residents enjoy correcting: the Detroit Zoo is theirs. The zoo opened on August 1, 1928 at Ten Mile and Woodward — straddling Royal Oak and Huntington Woods — and it made history on day one as the first zoo in America built without bars, following German designer Carl Hagenbeck’s then-radical idea that animals should roam open habitats bounded by moats and sculpted rock instead of cages.

Nearly a century later it’s one of Michigan’s biggest family attractions and a recognized leader in animal welfare — home to a celebrated penguin conservation center, an arctic tundra exhibit where polar bears swim overhead through a glass tunnel, and the summertime Wild Lights that have become a metro Detroit tradition. For the surrounding neighborhoods it functions like a giant park with zebras: memberships pay for themselves by June, and the holiday light walks bookend the year. Living near “the Detroit Zoo” while paying Royal Oak taxes — locals consider that a fair trade.