History
Brookfield Zoo Chicago, also known as the Chicago Zoological Park, is a zoo located in the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, Illinois. It opened on July 1st 1934 and quickly gained international recognition for using moats and ditches instead of cages to separate animals from visitors and from other animals. The zoo was also the first in America to exhibit giant pandas.
In 1919 Edith Rockefeller McCormick donated land she had received from her father as a wedding gift to the Cook County Forest Preserve District for development as a zoological garden. The district added 98 acres to that plot and in 1921 the Chicago Zoological Society was established
