Meet Salt Lake’s First Elephant: Princess Alice

Around 1911, Salt Lake City completed work on its first major park, Liberty Park. The park was built in the grand tradition of New York’s Central Park and London’s Hyde Park, albeit on a much smaller scale. In that tradition, Salt Lake City’s grand park must have a zoo among its attractions. Animals exotic and, more often, not so exotic filled the menagerie. But what zoo is complete, at least in the minds of Salt Lake City residents at the turn of the 20th Century, without an elephant? In 1916, Salt Lake City school children gathered up nickels, dimes and pennies in a fundraising drive and purchased an Asian elephant from a traveling circus for what was then the elephantine sum of $3,250. Her name was Princess Alice and she came with her circus handler. Emil “Dutch” Shider.

Princess Alice was a favorite, drawing visitors from around the region. But Alice didn’t take well to captivity. She became known for her daring escapes, rampaging around the surrounding Liberty Wells neighborhood, knocking down fences and hiding from searchers for hours. The repeated escapes, although charming, alarmed neighbors and prompted an effort to relocate the zoo to its current location at the mouth of Emigration Canyon in 1931. 

Local author and historian Linda Sillitoe memorialized Princess Alice’s exploits in her work of fiction The Thieves of Summer, which she set during her childhood in Salt Lake City around the time Princess Alice and the zoo moved to Emigration Canyon.

A sculpture in relief of Princess Alice’s visage was included in the elephant enclosure and remains there today. Even with the new digs, in 1947, she once again escaped, rampaging around the zoo grounds. In 1953, at the age of 69, Alice was euthanized after a prolonged illness. 

Alice’s Offspring

In 1918, Alice gave birth to a male elephant named Prince Utah, the first elephant ever born in Utah. Sadly, he died a year later after his mother rolled over on him.