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A roadside beginning
Owen Godwin founded Gatorland in 1949 on former cattle land along Orange Blossom Trail, near Kissimmee. With his wife Pearl, he set out to give passers-by a close look at Florida’s reptiles, and the park began as a roadside gift shop in a stockade-style building with a sawdust-covered dirt floor.


A railroad and a breeding marsh
The Gatorland Express, a two-foot narrow-gauge railroad first built by the Allan Herschell Company, opened in 1961; the park describes it as the first amusement attraction in Central Florida. The breeding marsh, crossed by a boardwalk with an observation tower, appeared in the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Still a family park
Gatorland is still privately owned by the Godwin family. After a fire destroyed the gift shop in November 2006, the park reopened less than three weeks later, and the rebuilt entrance building, with its historic concrete alligator’s mouth, opened in 2008. A zip line over the alligator pools followed in 2011.


