The Abandoned World; Exploring The Old LA Zoo

The Griffith Park Zoo/Abandoned LA Zoo is located in Griffith Park and was open from 1912-1966 when the new LA Zoo opened in a different location in Griffith Park. The abandoned Zoo is now used as a recreational area with picnic tables and hiking trails around it. Its completely free to visit and the trail through the abandoned enclosures and buildings is only 1.5 miles long, but be aware the park closes at sunset each day.

My friend wanted to explore the abandoned Zoo with me, so we set off early one Saturday morning to go find it. First thing we learnt was the address online for the abandoned zoo is incorrect, and if you type 'Abandoned LA Zoo' in to a GPS devise it will reroute you to the New LA Zoo, as my Garmin did. We were using the following address: 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90027, this is not the address for the Zoo itself, but will lead you to the Merry-Go-Round. Use the car park at the Merry-Go-Round and follow the closed road up to the dirt trail. Take the trail to the right hand side, as this will lead you to the top of the abandoned enclosures. This was actually the way we came out, but we realized its a lot easier to find using this trail, rather than walking along the road and then up in to the park and looking for it, like we did.

The first section of the Zoo we came across was this:

We had lots of fun exploring inside:

And outside:

We continued walking up the park and found a dirt trail to follow to the back of these areas; the sleeping areas for the animals:

Its really eerie inside!

We were very happy to discover you can really go anywhere you want here. We crawled through holes in walls to get in to other areas:

After exploring these enclosures we followed the trail up the hill to another abandoned building:

To access this one we had to go through a hole in the wall:

This building was so colorful from all the graffiti:

But it didn't feel as secure as the previous ones, so we looked around but left quickly as we felt the roof my fall on us!

We kept following the trail to see where it lead us, its actually a nice place for an easy hike:

The next building you will come across is this one:

(If you follow the dirt trail from the closed road after parking, this will be the first building you will come to)

We did hear that there is another section with smaller cages in it, but we didn't find this part, as we followed the dirt trail and then found it lead us back to the closed road and car park. This is when we realized this was the easiest way to the zoo location.

We had so much fun exploring these spooky abandoned enclosures and buildings, you get a weird eerie feeling that makes the hair on your arms stand up, like you are being followed or watched. While driving back home we talked about how much fun we had and started looking for other abandoned places to hike to; like Murphy's Ranch....but that's a story for another day!

Thanks for reading guys! Till next time :-D

!steemitworldmap 34.1338534 lat -118.2915652 long ´Abandoned LA Zoo, Griffith Park, California´ D3SCR