Why visit Plumpton Park Zoo?
Plumpton Park Zoo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit zoo at 1416 Telegraph Road in Rising Sun, Maryland, in the northeast corner of Cecil County. It has been open to the public since 1986, it welcomes more than 100,000 visitors a year, and parking is free.
There are bigger zoos within an hour’s drive. Here is what this one does differently.
A zoo you can actually finish
A big-city zoo is a route march. Families arrive with a map, pick three exhibits, and go home having missed most of it. Plumpton Park is small enough to walk at a four-year-old’s pace and still see everything — giraffes, tigers, bears, primates, owls, tortoises, and a barnyard full of animals that children can meet at eye level. Nobody has to be carried back to the car.
Admission also costs a fraction of what the same family pays in Baltimore or Philadelphia, and there is no parking fee on top of it.
Close enough to see the animal, not the enclosure
Sightlines here are short. Visitors stand near enough to watch a giraffe’s tongue work around a browse branch, or to notice that a tiger is watching them back. It is the difference between seeing an animal and looking at a habitat with an animal somewhere in it — and it is why people who have been to far larger collections tell us their children remember this one.
See the animals at Plumpton Park Zoo
Most of these animals needed somewhere to go
About half the collection came from private owners who could no longer care for an animal, from facilities that closed, or from situations that had gone wrong somewhere else. Taking those animals in, and then giving them decent space and proper veterinary care for the rest of their lives, is the reason the zoo exists rather than a side project it runs.
Admissions, memberships and donations pay for that care directly. There is no municipal budget behind this zoo.
Three centuries of history on the same ground
The oldest thing here is not an animal. A water-powered corn and grist mill was built on North East Creek in 1734 by Jeremiah Brown Sr., a Quaker miller; the Jeremiah Brown House and Mill Site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. The mill stands beside the admissions area at the front of the zoo and houses the gift shop, and the creek that once turned its wheel still runs through the grounds.
Read the history of Plumpton Park Zoo
Open seven days a week
The zoo is open every day of the week, with hours that change between the summer and winter seasons. Most of the grounds are outdoors, so the animals are more active on cool mornings than on hot afternoons — the first hour after opening is usually the best time to come.
Come and see for yourself
Plumpton Park Zoo is roughly half an hour from Newark, Delaware, and a little over an hour from both Baltimore and Philadelphia. It is a nonprofit, it is small, the animals are close, and every ticket sold goes straight back into looking after them.
Do you have a listing of when the animals are fed and can visitors watch? My granddaughter’s love watching animals and would be interested in that activity?
We do not as we try not to feed the animals at the exact time each day. If the get fed at certain times they can become habitual which is not a normal wild behavior. The exception is the giraffe feeding station which starts at 11:00 each day if the giraffes are interested.