Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the detail.
Wide plains, a valley setting and decades of breeding endangered species offer several ways into the story of the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
On this page
A park in the San Pasqual Valley
The park opened in 1972 as the San Diego Wild Animal Park and took its present name in 2010. It lies in the San Pasqual Valley, within the City of San Diego, with an Escondido postal address.
It covers 1,800 acres and welcomed more than 1.6 million visitors in 2022.
Open plains
More than 300 acres of the park are open field habitats, where herds of animals from Africa and Asia share the land, seen from the Africa Tram.
The park is home to more than 3,000 animals of more than 400 species, and it is a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
Breeding for the wild
From 1980 the park helped breed California condors for release, and it has a long history of work with rhinos. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, a non-profit, runs both the Safari Park and the San Diego Zoo.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
