MISSOULA — A strange, stone building juts out of the hillside at the south end of Missoula’s Greenough Park. Decades ago, it was used to house bears. Now, it is one of the last remnants of a wildlife menagerie that once bustled in the park.
“They captured a whole bunch of animals from Montana and had them in cages for people to see,” said Missoula Parks & Recreation’s Ecosystem Services Division Director Morgan Valliant. “Folks would come and check out the animals and feed the bears, I’m sure, and feed the elk and feed anything else that was here.”
Donated by the Greenough family in 1902, the sprawling chunk of the lower Rattlesnake became Missoula’s first park. The zoo was one of many draws.
The bear cage held two black bears, with a den inside the stone structure and a fenced area outside, according to Valliant. There are even rumors, though unconfirmed, that the cage housed the bears once used as mascots by the University of Montana.
“The bear cage here is a little bit of Missoula's hidden history,” he said. “A lot of people don't realize that this commuter trail was a road where you could drive your Model T to picnic down by the creek.”
While the cage is one of the most visible remnants of the park’s past, it is not the only one. In the 1950s, as some parts of the park were clear-cut to make way for baseball fields, a partnership stepped in to change its path.
“The Greenough family wanted this park to remain in a natural state for the people to enjoy. That is incredibly rare, and I, personally, believe that that really set an ethos in our community of preserving high-use developed parks and our natural areas,” Valliant said.
“The city and the Greenoughs reaffirmed that the park should be a natural area, and that really set the trajectory for what we have today. Obviously, we don't still have a zoo in Greenough Park, but we do still manage it predominantly for connection to nature, connection to the creek, and ecosystem services," Valliant continued.
The city has done restoration work on the cage, hoping to preserve it for more generations of Greenough Park-goers to enjoy. They are also looking at options to put in interpretive signs as part of a larger push to tell the stories hidden in the park’s history.
“To anybody that wants to come and see it ... please recognize that this structure is 100 years old. It’s not something that should be climbed on,” Valliant said.
