Imagine a place near downtown San Antonio where kids could ride atop an alligator for mere pennies.
Such a unique site existed in the Alamo City for over two decades.
Alligator Garden, a popular spot that had a roadside attraction appeal, entertained guests for 23 years just outside Brackenridge Park. The business closed during the summer of 1975.
News of Alligator Garden’s impending closure published in the Aug. 16, 1975, edition of the San Antonio Express newspaper. The park shut down its operations before the month’s end.
Founders Bill and Vera Kimbrell, tired of the grind of running a business, decided it was time to call it quits. The couple moved the facility’s 32 alligators to Arkansas, donating the reptiles to an alligator park in Hot Springs, archives show.
The place was a popular site for school field trips, birthday party celebrations and family outings. Archival photos show both kids and adults getting close to the alligators, several of whom were given names like any household pet.
Alligator Garden contained 10 sunken, open-air cement tanks that could hold as many as 75 alligators, which the park reportedly housed at its peak. Bill Kimbrell caught many of the alligators himself.
Also on the grounds was a small building that housed a souvenir shop and ticket counter. One of the park’s notable attractions was a 10-cent kid’s ride atop an alligator named Old Joe.
Other alligators included Little Jerry, a gator with a broken back who helped raise thousands of dollars to fight polio in the 1950s, and Petunia, whose loud, snapping jaws made her one of the park’s star attractions.
The Kimbrells opened Alligator Garden in 1952 after running a similar business, called the Texas Alligator Farm, on Roosevelt Avenue. They moved to Broadway after a reptile garden that had operated at the site since 1933 went out of business, according to newspaper archives.
A plaque commemorating Alligator Garden and its role in San Antonio history was placed near where it once stood.
