What goes better together than Lions and Jeeps, right? Apparently the Lion Country Safari founders agreed. I’d never heard of the parks until I ran across this ebay photo showing a child sitting in a Zebra striped M-38A1:
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Curious about the park, I dug through the interweb for more info. According to Wikipedia, the company provided drive-through park experiences. They were started in “1967 by a group of South African and British entrepreneurs who wished to provide a safari experience for families who would not normally be able to experience it. The park originally exhibited only lions. The original South Florida park is the only one remaining in operation. Lion Country Safari previously operated parks in Irvine, California (1970–1984);Grand Prairie, Texas (1971–1992); Stockbridge, Georgia; Mason, Ohio (1974–1993) and Doswell, Virginia (1974–1993); all of them subsequently closed.”
Given the sign above mentions “Laguna Hills” at the bottom, I think it is safe to assume this is the Irvine, California, park. Here are photos of the Laguna Hills park when it was running, here are additional photos, and before/after photos of the park after its demise. I found two more photos of the jeep above lead me to believe it was especially for photos:
This photo shows Terri Tolliver posing on the jeep for Western Photo Magazine (Neither a search for Terri nor a search for Western Photo Magazine yielded any results). An 8×10 of the photo is for sale on eBay:
As mentioned earlier, the park in Florida still exists. It has been voted one of the top ten zoos by The Weather Channel (do they know zoos?) and received other accolades. It even has (or had?) some jeeps, but they look like they are only for the kids, as this flickr photo from 2009 demonstrates:
