The Children's Zoo that started with a beaver and a coyote

In 1929 a Saginaw parks commissioner named George Phoenix decided the corner of Ezra Rust Park needed some animals, and the next spring the new zoo’s whole roster was a beaver, a coyote, a fox, some bears, raccoons, timber wolves, owls, hawks, and a single deer. Almost a hundred years later that modest little collection has grown into the Children’s Zoo at Celebration Square, with more than 150 animals spread across ten tree-shaded acres on Saginaw’s south side.

The animals are only half of it. The zoo runs a miniature train that’s been hauling kids in slow loops since the 1960s, and it has a carousel that’s worth a second look — a hand-carved one, the only such in the region, with each figure cut by hand rather than stamped out of fiberglass. Colorful gardens fill the gaps between exhibits. It’s the kind of place built at kid scale: small enough to see in an afternoon, close enough that the animals feel within reach.

For decades the city owned and ran it, with the usual ups and downs that come with a tax-funded zoo — there were lean stretches when the place ran down. In 1996 the Saginaw Zoological Society took over the day-to-day operation from the city, and it has run the zoo ever since, which is most of the reason it’s still here and looking good.

It sits in Saginaw’s Celebration Square, the cluster of parkland near downtown that also holds the Japanese tea house and gardens. A beaver and a coyote in 1929; a carousel and a train and a small jungle of animals now. Not a bad return on one commissioner’s idea.