History of Plumpton Park Zoo

Plumpton Park Zoo sits on ground that has been worked continuously since the early 1700s. Long before there were giraffes on Telegraph Road, there was a Colonial gristmill here, turned by the water of North East Creek, and a farmstead that passed through four families before a herd of white deer turned it into a zoo.

A mill on North East Creek, 1734

The oldest thing at the zoo is not an animal. It is the mill. Jeremiah Brown Sr., a Quaker who had come down from Pennsylvania, built a water-powered corn and grist mill on this land in 1734, and added a stone house in 1757. The mill ground grain for the surrounding farms for the better part of two centuries. The mill was heavily damaged by lightning and fire in 1971 and later reconstructed on its original stone foundation. Portions of the earlier structure survive, including original framing with visible charring and smoke staining, as well as massive floor timbers planed flat on one side. The whole site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. It is not a building you have to go looking for — the mill stands beside the admissions area at the front of the zoo and houses the gift shop.

Read the full history of the Jeremiah Brown Mill

The creek that made it possible

None of it happens without the water. North East Creek rises just over the Pennsylvania line and runs south through Cecil County, gathering enough fall and steady flow to turn a mill wheel year-round. That is the only reason a miller chose this particular bend of ground in 1734 rather than any other. The creek still runs through the property today.

More about North East Creek and its watershed

White deer, and the start of the zoo

The Plumstead family bought the mill property in 1946. Edward C. Plumstead had studied painting, sculpture and illustration at Yale and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and he brought to the land a powerful intellect, a considerable sense of humor and a real interest in history. He was instrumental in saving both the Jeremiah Brown homestead here on the property and the Brick Meeting House nearby.

In 1966 he brought two white European fallow deer to the place. They were not meant to be an attraction. But year by year they drew the attention and curiosity of more and more people, Watusi cattle arrived, and the collection took on a momentum of its own. It was his business partner, Sam Connor, who saw what to do with it: open the place as a zoo and charge admission, so that what came through the gate could go back into the care of the animals. In 1986 Plumstead took that step and opened to the public. He named it from an old English poem in which lords and ladies wander with fallow deer in Plumpton Park.

It grew under his direction, and a great deal of that growth came from animals nobody else could take. Sis, a Siberian tiger, was caught up in US customs; Plumstead learned of her plight and spent two years getting her imported and brought here. Exotic animals arrived from owners who could not handle them and from the authorities — the police once handed him an alligator they had found in a crashed car. His passion for animals drove the zoo’s growth for the better part of twenty-five years.

Closing, and coming back

By his early eighties the demands of the place were more than one man could carry, and while he was working through an illness he turned to others for help. As he put it himself, that help “ran the zoo into the ground”. In August 2010 Edward Plumstead made the heartbreaking decision to close it.

Later that same month he found a new group to help repair and reopen the zoo, and he directed and assisted them in almost every way he could — advice, finances, animal care, and, at 83, weed whacking. He died in 2018 at the age of 91. The giraffe barn built during the rebuild carries his name.

Edward Plumstead’s lifelong love of animals, his generosity and his compassion created Plumpton Park Zoo and helped sustain it. The zoo remains dedicated to his vision.

Jimmie the Giraffe

The zoo’s best-known resident arrived from the Phoenix Zoo in 1996 and lived here for twenty-five years. In 2003, five-year-old Catherine Lacovara was photographed feeding him for the front page of the Cecil Whig. Years later she became one of the veterinarians responsible for his care. When Jimmie died in November 2021 at 26½, he was the oldest living male giraffe in the world.

Read Jimmie’s story — including a remarkable photograph from 2003

The zoo today

Plumpton Park Zoo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, home to more than 280 animals across more than 70 species, and it welcomes more than 100,000 visitors a year. The mill still stands. The creek still runs. Plan your visit today.

Making a day of it in the area? See our guide to things to do in Cecil County, Maryland — including Gilpin’s Falls Covered Bridge downstream on the same creek, the canal town at Chesapeake City and the granite cliffs at Port Deposit.