Old Los Angeles Zoo: Travel Guide (4.6★)

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Why go

You come around a bend on the park road and suddenly there’s a row of concrete caves cut into the hillside, bars still bolted into some of the openings, moss furring the shadows inside. This is what’s left of the original Los Angeles Zoo, which operated here from 1912 until 1966, when the animals were relocated to the current LA Zoo a couple of miles north. Instead of bulldozing the old grottoes, the city left them standing, and Griffith Park quietly absorbed them into its trail network. What you get now is a genuinely strange, semi-wild ruin — part abandoned zoo, part community park — where kids scramble over bear dens and picnic tables sit twenty feet from what was once a lion enclosure.

Getting there

The site sits inside Griffith Park at 4801 Griffith Park Dr, just off Crystal Springs Drive near the park’s merry-go-round and the Autry Museum of the American West. If you’re driving, there’s free parking along Crystal Springs Drive and in the nearby lots by the picnic areas — arrive early on weekends, since spots near the old zoo fill fast once families show up. By public transit, LA Metro bus 96 runs into Griffith Park with stops within walking distance; a taxi or rideshare drop-off at the “Old Zoo Picnic Area” is the simplest option if you’re coming from Hollywood or Los Feliz, both about ten minutes away by car.

What to see

The enclosures are the whole point: roughly two dozen grottoes and cages, many carved directly into the rock, connected by dirt paths and stone stairways that climb the hillside. Some cages still have their iron bars intact; others are open shells now claimed by climbing kids and photographers chasing graffiti-and-light shots. Look for the old bear dens near the base of the site — deep enough that you’ll want a phone flashlight — and the elevated cages higher up the slope, which give you a view back down over the picnic lawn and, on clear days, toward the Griffith Observatory dome. Interpretive signage is minimal to nonexistent, so this isn’t a place with a curated narrative; it rewards wandering and reading the concrete itself, water stains and rebar and all. The surrounding oak-shaded picnic tables and adjoining trailheads (this is a jumping-off point for longer Griffith Park hikes toward the Observatory or Mount Hollywood) mean you can easily fold a visit here into a half-day in the park.

When to go

The site is open daily from 5:30am to 10:30pm, though you’ll want daylight to actually see into the grottoes — plan your visit between mid-morning and early evening. Weekend crowd data for the area shows the calm window is 7am to 9am; after that, through roughly 8pm, picnic groups, birthday parties, and school-age climbers fill the old cages and lawns. If you want photos without people in the frame, or you just want the eerie quiet the ruins are built for, get there right at that early window. Weekdays tend to be quieter across the board, though no specific quiet hours are tracked for them — a weekday morning is a safe bet if your schedule allows it.

How to visit like a local

This isn’t a hidden find — it’s a well-known Griffith Park landmark that regularly draws families, joggers, and hikers passing through, so don’t expect solitude except in that early weekend window. There’s no admission fee and no ticket booth, so there’s nothing to book and nothing to pay; you just walk in from the picnic area. The etiquette here is mostly about respect for a fragile, unsupervised ruin: the old bars and ledges look sturdier than they are, so treat climbing cautiously, keep an eye on kids around the open pits, and pack out anything you bring in, since there are no zoo staff cleaning up after visitors anymore. The mistake most first-timers make is treating it as a five-minute photo stop and missing the trailheads that lead out from the picnic area — pair your visit with a stretch of the Griffith Park trail system, since the Old Zoo is really a gateway to a much bigger network of hikes rather than a standalone attraction.