Crandon Park

This guide to Crandon Park in Miami traces how a broken-down traveling road show settled its debt in 1948 with a handful of animals, planting an accidental zoo on land the Matheson family once farmed as the country's largest coconut plantation. From there it follows the zoo's rapid growth through donated lions, elephants and giraffes into one of the country's top twenty-five, and the storm that struck it in September 1965. Listen as you walk the park paths near the old fossil reef overlook, where peacocks and iguanas now wander freely.