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Jungleland USA

1926 establishments in California1969 disestablishments in CaliforniaDefunct amusement parks in CaliforniaFormer zoosHistory of Thousand Oaks, California
History of Ventura County, CaliforniaZoos disestablished in 1969Zoos established in 1926Zoos in California
Children on elephant at Jungleland, California, 1962
Children on elephant at Jungleland, California, 1962

Jungleland USA was a private zoo, animal training facility, and animal theme park in Thousand Oaks, California, United States, on the current site of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. At its peak the facility encompassed 170 acres (69 ha).Louis Goebel created Jungleland in 1926 as a support facility for Hollywood. He had been employed at Universal Studios when the studio decided to close its animal facility. Five of the Universal Studio lions formed the nucleus of Goebel's collection. The facility was originally called Goebel's Lion Farm and then Goebel's Wild Animal Farm. Soon a wide variety of exotic animals were obtained, trained, and rented to the studios for use in films. The facility later became a theme park, opened to the public in 1929. Wild animal shows entertained thousands in the 1940s and 1950s. Mabel Stark, the "lady lion tamer", was featured in these shows; she also doubled for Mae West in the lion-taming scenes in the 1933 film I'm No Angel. The zoo's residents included Leo the Lion, mascot of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio; Mister Ed, the talking horse from the television show of the same name; Bimbo the elephant from the Circus Boy television series; and Tamba the chimpanzee, featured in the Jungle Jim movies and television series.Many TV and movie productions used the park's trained animals, and many productions were filmed there, including The Birth of a Nation, The Fugitive, Tarzan the Ape Man, Doctor Dolittle, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. It was also featured prominently in an episode of the television show Route 66 (Season 2, Episode 31, "Hell Is Empty, All The Devils Are Here"). The park made headlines in 1966 when a male lion at the compound named Sammy mauled Zoltán Hargitay, the young son of actors Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield. A barn fire in 1940 killed 12 of the animals including tigers, camels and elephants.Jungleland closed in October 1969, because of competition from other Southern California amusement parks, and because the facility "didn't blend in" with the increasingly urban character of Thousand Oaks. The company which owned the facilities declared bankruptcy and sold all the movable property at auction: animals, buildings, trucks, furniture and supplies. Goebel retained ownership of the land, which was eventually sold to the city to create the Civic Arts Plaza and other developments.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Jungleland USA (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Jungleland USA
South Conejo School Road, Thousand Oaks

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Wikipedia: Jungleland USAContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 34.174095 ° E -118.847544 °
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South Conejo School Road
91362 Thousand Oaks
California, United States
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Children on elephant at Jungleland, California, 1962
Children on elephant at Jungleland, California, 1962
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Nearby Places

Janss Marketplace
Janss Marketplace

Janss Marketplace is an outdoor shopping mall in Thousand Oaks, California. Previously known as Janss Mall, it opened in September 1961 as Village Lane. It was the first mall established in the city, and Thousand Oaks' only shopping center until The Oaks was built in 1978. 39 businesses are located here as of 2023. Conejo Valley Art Museum is also located here. It is home to well-known anchoring stores - Nordstrom Rack, and Old Navy. - along with specialty shops and fast food establishments. It has a nine-screen movie theater and is surrounded by neighborhood restaurants.A big attraction here in the 1960s was its 854-seat Fox Conejo movie theater. The theater opened in May 1963 with a gala premiere of the movie A Gathering of Eagles (1963). Celebrities such as Lee J. Cobb, Barbara Eden, Gary Crosby and Annette Funicello attended the opening gala.In 2015, Sears Holdings spun off 235 of its properties, including the Sears at Janss Marketplace, into Seritage Growth Properties. Sears downsized its store from 171,000 square feet (15,900 square meters) to 68,750 square feet (6,387 square meters) to make way for Nordstrom Rack, DSW, and Sports Authority, which closed in 2016. The Reign of Terror Haunted House is located here, which is a 25,000 square feet (2,300 square meters) house open for tours on and around Halloween.Toys "R" Us closed in June 2018. On June 28, 2018, it was announced that Sears would be closing as part of a plan to close 78 stores nationwide. The store closed in September 2018. The former Sports Authority space became Dave & Busters that year.

Case Study House No. 28
Case Study House No. 28

The Case Study House No. 28, at 91 Inverness Rd., Thousand Oaks, California, is the only Case Study House in Ventura County. Built during 1965–66, it was listed on the National Register along with several other Case Study Houses in Los Angeles County on July 24, 2013, as part of the "Case Study House Program NPS". This one-story flat-roofed house, designed by architects Conrad Buff and Donald Hensman of the firm Buff and Hensman, was the last family home built in the program and one of the largest at 4,500 square feet. The architects designed the house with classic concept in modern architecture of merging interior and exterior spaces through glass expanses and seamless materials. Face brick was incorporated into the house since it is located on a knoll overlooking a development where this was the unifying material. Previous houses in the program consisted primarily of glass and exposed steel, but the Janss Development Corporation and Pacific Clay Products wanted to demonstrate the advantages of the alternative material.Decorative iron gates at the entrance frame the center courtyard that has a swimming pool. Along with the brick face, the house has more than 4,000 square feet of glass windows that are shaded by overhangs. The owners described how they considered installing double paned glass but found it would not fit into the steel frame; the single paned glass makes the house hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Solar panels have been put on the roof along with replacing the asphalt and gravel material, popular at the time the house was constructed, with white foam.When the current owners purchased the house in 1987, the previous owners had shared media coverage about the house with them. In 2013, the owner said to the local press, "I fell in love with the house. I saw it as a work of art."