Originally published on Jan. 27, 2002

TAMPA - Wild animals - and people - have always roamed where Montu, Kumba, zebras and monkeys now rule.

Long before Busch Gardens opened in 1959, beckoning guests with free beer and a chance to see exotic birds and flowers, the future theme park's land was roamed by black bears, deer, turkeys and bobcats.

In the early 1900s, hunters stalked wildlife on the 5,500-acre flatland of pine trees and palmettos that included the future Busch Gardens property. The wealthy Chicago Potter-Palmer family owned the private hunting preserve, as well as half of Sarasota County. In 1941, parts of the property were cleared for concrete runways and tarmac for Henderson Airport, a pale forerunner of Tampa's international airport.

During World War II, flyboys arrived on the airfield from all over the country to learn to fly P-51 Mustangs. By then, it was run by the U.S. Army Air Corps and renamed Hillsborough Army Airfield.

Ansley Watson, now 89, was the base's commanding officer.

``We had about 400 people on the base. Mechanics and clerks and GIs lived there in barracks. Officers lived off base,'' recalls Watson, who lives in Palma Ceia, just 10 miles from the base he first commanded in January '44 and closed less than a year later. ``It was really wooded then, but we had service facilities with one hangar and a control tower and a concrete building where we parked the fighters. We usually had about 28 airplanes.''

It was a very small base, remembers his wife, Jane Price Watson, whom he met at a party not long after arriving in Tampa from South Dakota in 1943. ``But he was determined to make it a fine base.''

Watson, who flew for United Airlines before and after the war, arranged for bombers from MacDill Air Force Base to fly over his airfield for training exercises.

``We would play like we were attacking them,'' he recalls. ``Six bombers, 12 fighters. We did rolls and zooms.''

Years later, the Watsons settled in Tampa and often took their four children and nine grandchildren to Busch Gardens to see the animals. Watson knew the theme park was on the same property as his base, but he never associated the two, since it didn't seem like anything was left of his old airfield. But when he visited the park in 1994, Busch employees - knowing his background - showed him some of the leftover concrete tarmac just north of park boundaries.

The tarmac reminded him of the closeness of the base back then.

``We pursuit pilots were closer to each other than bomber pilots,'' he says, smiling. ``Because we thought we were the best.''

Beer And Birds

After the war, the base returned to local hands. In 1950, led by lawyer Chester Ferguson and the Tampa Chamber of Commerce, civic leaders offered the 2,800-acre property free to the Air Force for its planned $171 million U.S. Air Force Academy. The Air Force settled on Colorado Springs, Colo., instead. So the civic leaders converted some of the property into an industrial park, where first a Schlitz brewery, then the Busch brewery, were built.

In 1957, August A. Busch Jr. paid $320,000 for 130 acres that included part of the base the flyboys left behind. He already had ties to the area as owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, who held spring training in St. Petersburg. He spent $20 million to build an Anheuser-Busch brewery on the land.

Two years later, to attract townspeople to taste its beers, the company opened a beer garden and bird show in front of the brewery. The attraction, with four employees and four parrots, was a hit from the start. Three million visitors came the first three years.

Al Mello, 57, now general curator for zoological operations, arrived in 1964 as a 20-year-old just out of the Army.

At first, he watered plants, cleaned bird cages and prepared bird food. Later, he trained birds and worked in bird shows, then with the larger animals.

``In those early days, it was just a bird park. Nobody had any idea it would become what it did,'' he says, recalling that, back then, parts of the park were still thick with palmettos and black jack oaks.

He remembers colorful, squawking macaws sitting on visitors' outstretched arms for photographs.

``Sometimes, the birds would get an eye for someone's buttons and snag them off and drop them in a flick of an eye,'' he recalls, laughing. ``We had 25 free-flying birds in the old days throughout the park. They would swoop down from the roof and take the mike off the bird show announcer. We had names for all the birds - the Lucys, the Jollies, the Bilkos. We knew the Betsys, the Bettys, the Billies. We knew them individually.''

The brewery was always a big hit, not just for the free beer. People loved to ride the soaring escalator up to the top of the brewery, where they learned how beer was made.

``It was called the Stairway to the Stars,'' Mello recalls.

In 1962, Busch Gardens took a new tack by transforming 70 acres of its property into the Serengeti Plain and stocking it with free-roaming elephants, zebras, giraffes, antelope, camels, gazelles, sheep, ostriches and monkeys. A monorail and railway took visitors close by the animals.

In the late '60s, Mello remembers, the park adopted the motto ``Where people are caged and animals run free.'' That was a first for a zoo, and people loved it, he says. By 1968, Busch Gardens was Florida's No. 1 tourist attraction. Three million people a year found their way there.

Many came to eat in Old Swiss House, patterned after the famed Old Swiss House in Lucerne, Switzerland, but overlooking giraffes and gazelles grazing on the Serengeti Plain. Busch had it built in 1964 as a Valentine's Day present for his third wife, Trudy, whose brother owned Switzerland's Old Swiss House. Once considered one of the finest restaurants in Tampa, it was closed for seven years, then was renovated and reopened as the Crown Colony House in 1990.

In 1968, the Florida Legislature passed a special act renaming the road south of the park Busch Boulevard. Some church people protested the move. They didn't want a city street named after a brewery.

Three years earlier, when the idea came up before the Tampa City Council, City Councilman Dick Greco, who would later become mayor, voted against it. The motion failed 5 to 2.

But others pushed to honor the man who brought so many visitors to Tampa.

Stories Abound

Talk to longtime Busch Gardens workers and neighbors, and just about everyone has a story.

Georgette Osburn, who lives four miles from the park, remembers a buffalo that wandered into the sand lot behind her house one day in 1969.

``He was so cute. He had escaped from Busch Gardens,'' she says, laughing.

Mello remembers that day vividly. When he got the call, he jumped in his truck and headed to Osburn's house. The buffalo, which had broken through two chain-link fences, was calmly eating grass when Mello found him.

Mello and police officers called a vet, who tranquilized the behemoth with a dart so the men could get him into a truck and back to the park.

``He was 1,000 pounds. He was a big boy,'' Mello recalls.

An even bigger challenge arrived a few years later when Mickey Mouse crept into Busch Gardens' back yard.

Instead of hunkering down and staying small, Busch Gardens beefed up for the challenge. Walt Disney World had Cinderella's Castle. But Busch had free beer and wild animals and was about to get exotic villages and great rides.

In 1975, it added Moroccan Village, with cafes and Moroccan craftsmen. Acrobats, belly dancers, sword swallowers, magicians and organ grinder monkeys were also featured.

In 1976, the Python roller coaster opened in an area later called the Congo. Soon, the park started touting itself as ``The Dark Continent'' to capitalize on its African theme.

Pandy Sokol, who started working at the park 25 years ago, when she was 17, remembers dressing up like a Moroccan and taking goats, sheep and capuchin monkeys out among the visitors. The monkeys were trained to take coins from people and drop them in a little tin can.

``My monkey's name was Dempsey,'' she recalls. ``He was great.'' But she didn't like wearing a costume.

In 1978, she shifted to the animal nursery hospital, nursing baby giraffes, tigers, chimps, gazelles, squirrel monkeys and even newborn snakes.

``I ended up staying in the nursery 14 years,'' she says. ``I have three daughters, and I tell them that when they were born, I already knew how to diaper a baby. I learned by changing diapers on chimps.''

Now Sokol supervises the Edge of Africa area of the park, home to black rhinos, lions, baboons, lemurs, meerkats and Cape buffalo.

While Sokol worked in the nursery struggling to get 7-foot-tall baby giraffes to drink from baby bottles while they sucked her neck and long hair, Busch Gardens was adding more attractions to the landscape.

In 1980, the park spent $18 million to build Timbuktu, home to the Dolphin Theater, the German-style restaurant German Festhaus and the Scorpion roller coaster.

During that time, it also created Adventure Island, its water theme park, on 22 acres a quarter-mile northeast of Busch Gardens.

In 1982, the white-water raft ride Congo River Rapids arrived at Busch Gardens, along with two white Bengal tigers to live on Claw Island. The park touted the pair as only two of 60 known to exist.

Two years later, 25 reticulated giraffes were brought in from Kenya. In what may be one of the park's few public relations missteps, Busch news announcements misrepresented the giraffes as being extremely endangered. Only when wildlife experts told the press the giraffes were common and far from threatened or endangered did the park admit it had been mistaken.

But people loved to see them anyway. With 2.8 million visitors in 1984, Busch Gardens was the state's third most popular attraction, behind Walt Disney World and SeaWorld.

Locals still remember Yong Yong and Ling Ling, two pandas who arrived in 1987 for what was to be a three-month stay. The adorable duo were so phenomenally popular, Busch convinced the Chinese government to allow them to stay longer. One stayed six months, the other 11 months. After thousands streamed by to see them in their temperature-controlled pagoda, the visitors bought truckloads of panda sweatshirts and coffee mugs, stuffed toy pandas, panda kites, socks and ashtrays.

When the pandas went back to China, two koalas from Australia arrived to make up for the loss.

Decade Of The Roller Coaster

The 1990s brought many changes to Busch Gardens - by now encompassing 360 acres - that would transform its reputation forever. The brewery closed in 1995, rousting 375 workers. Hugely popular state-of-the-art roller coasters were added - Kumba, the largest and fastest coaster in the Southeast, in 1993; and Montu, the world's tallest and largest inverted roller coaster and centerpiece of the 7-acre Egypt theme area, in 1996. Gwazi, a wooden double roller coaster, opened in '99.

The new rides rivaled anything Disney, SeaWorld or Universal Studios had.

In 1997, Busch added the 15-acre wildlife exhibit Edge of Africa so visitors could see hippos, lions and baboons close up. In April 1998, Disney lobbed back with Animal Kingdom, showcasing many of the animals Busch Gardens had for years.

But Busch Gardens spokesman Will Darnall says the Tampa theme park isn't trying to compete with Disney for its legions of international guests. It prides itself that so many Floridians love to go there. He mentions one annual pass holder who visits the park nearly every other day and knows employees and animals by name.

Dennis Kiegel, who has worked with animals at Busch Gardens for 27 years, says many pass holders almost live at the park.

``Lots of people think of this as their own personal park,'' he says.

Many couples have taken it to heart by getting married in the park - on roller coasters, in the restaurants, at the Howl-O-Scream celebration. One couple even exchanged vows in front of the dolphin show - the dolphins leapt from the water for them after their ceremony.

As with many Busch employees, working in the park is a family affair for Kiegel. Both his sons have worked there. Mello's dad, wife, son and daughter-in-law worked there, too. Pandy Sokol's daughter, Leslie, who's 19, works in the park's zoo education program for children.

``It's definitely not been a 9-to-5 job, or a boring job,'' she says. ``That's what keeps so many of us here so long. It's more than a great job. It's a lifestyle. I've had a blast.''