Arkansas Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo
Alligator farm circa 1924
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| Date opened | 1902 |
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| Location | Hot Springs, Arkansas, United States |
| Coordinates | 34°30′54″N 93°04′24″W / 34.51500°N 93.07333°WCoordinates: 34°30′54″N 93°04′24″W / 34.51500°N 93.07333°W |
| No. of animals | 400 |
| No. of species | 60 |
| Website | www |
The Arkansas Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo is a privately owned zoo located on Whittington Avenue in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
The farm raises alligators and has done so since it was founded in 1902. The farm includes a small museum with a collection of mounted alligators, a souvenir shop and a snack bar. It includes the mummified carcass purporting to be a "Merman", similar to ones held in Ripley's Believe It or Not! museums.
The main alligator pit contains a small headstone, a memorial to somebody's fox terrier that was killed by alligators on that spot in 1906.
H. L. Campbell founded the farm in 1902 because he thought the Hot Springs area needed a tourist attraction in addition to the thermal baths. He sold it to D. S. Older some time before 1929. During this time it was called the "Hot Springs Gator Farm", and had up to 1500 alligators and included a small museum.
The farm was sold to Jack Bridges, Sr. and his wife in 1945, and the name was changed to the Arkansas Alligator Farm. The Bridges added a gift shop, and well as other animals such as monkeys, raccoons, and logger-head turtles. Jack Bridges Jr. and his wife Sue purchased the zoo in 1965, and added more animals, as well as a petting zoo and a small museum.
In addition to about 200 alligators, the zoo now includes cougars, turkeys, chickens, wild boars, turtles, bobcats, and ring-tailed lemurs.
The farm includes a petting zoo with goats, emus, llamas, white-tailed deer, pigs, baby alligators, and other animals. Visitors can get close to the animals and feed them. The alligator feeding show also includes educational material about the animals.
The farm started out as a business to raise alligators for their hides and to sell live alligators to parks and zoos. The farm was one of the first to use incubators to help raise the eggs into hatchlings. In its early days, visitors were able to purchase live baby alligators from the farm.
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