My wife and I moved to Maine in 1972 after a two-week vacation in Phippsburg. We were from the New York/New Jersey area and decided then and there that a permanent move to vacationland would be what we both wanted. We bought a place on Storer Road in Brunswick to get away from big city life and enjoy the peace and quiet on our own five acres. The first time the weather was warm enough to open the windows we were amazed to hear what undoubtedly was the roaring of lions. How could this be? That was our introduction to Simpson’s Animal Park which it turned out was just through the woods downstream from us on the Androscoggin River.

Simpson’s Animal Park was a theme park that opened in the spring of 1958 in Brunswick. It was on the Old Bath Rd. in a wooded setting on the shore of the Androscoggin River where it widens into Merrymeeting Bay. Frank Simpson was the owner/operator and it was the only park of its kind in the entire area. It featured “wild animals” as well as more familiar creatures in a spacious 17-acre setting. There was every kind of local animal including deer, otters, racoons, ducks and geese as well as more exotics all in a natural setting. Lions, leopards, llamas, three kinds of bears, cougar cubs, monkeys, and alpacas all could be seen in their enclosures on the shaded paths that wound through the park. “Old McDonald’s Farm” was an area that recreated a domestic farm with goats and pigs and was designed mostly for children. The racoons and otters had a special area to themselves at the bottom of a hill where a spring fed a stream that was damned to make a pond. The racoons had the pond while the otters had an adjacent deep concrete basin. Ted Crooker especially enjoyed playing with the racoons when he was a child.

Twice a day Frank Simpson put on wild animal shows with the big cats in the show ring, arena. The Brunswick physician Dr. Daniel Hanley was called upon to treat injuries Frank suffered from accidents with the animals.

One arrived at the park on U.S. Route 1A where there were parking lots for hundreds of cars on both side of the road with overflow parking along the road. Some of the animals could be seen through the fence and that was certainly a draw as people drove by. Visitors entered the park through the gift shop, paid admission and as one exited the shop, a snack bar was on your right. Benches and picnic tables were scattered along the many landscaped woodland paths. There were streams that were damned to make ponds with swan boats for rides. Simpson built a “Wild West Frontier Village” which included a general store, Sheriff’s office-jail, blacksmith shop and Wells Fargo Office. There was also a full-sized Indian teepee and a large hand painted woodsy mural for photo backgrounds. The food for the many animals was stored in the back of a refrigerated truck he’d buried in a hillside. There was a miniature live steam train that chugged along and children could ride on 1700 feet of track which even went through a 50 ft. tunnel. The tunnel served as a walkway to the seated plane ride which was in the middle of the train circuit.

Besides all the animals at the park, Simpson took advantage of the many feet of shore frontage he had and over the years offered boat rides in either of two air boats or later a jet boat. One could cruise the Androscoggin River and the bay or explore the old schooner, Eva S. Cullison which remained tied up on the shore. The ship needed constant attention but the novelty of seeing such a sailing vessel drew patrons who could marvel at her large size and walk through her.

Frank Tufton Simpson was born in Brunswick in 1908 and went to Brunswick schools. He became a pilot, had a flying service, flew the first airmail out of Brunswick in 1936 and was the chief flight instructor at Bowdoin College in 1941-42. Charles Lindbergh was known to stop at Frank’s airfield on the Old Bath Rd. to fill up his plane when en route to visit his girlfriend in Maine. Frank was color blind but had memorized the test to get his pilots license. Perhaps his most exciting experience was as a test pilot for P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes on Long Island N.Y. for Republic Aviation. He did strafing runs firing its’ eight 50 caliber machine guns on targets in Long Island Sound. Upon returning from a strafing run there was a hole in his propeller which was determined to have come from a ricochet…a close call!

Back in Brunswick, he and Harry Crooker his boyhood friend became partners in the construction business. They’d worked on building the Bowdoin Drive in Theater and Sills Drive at Bowdoin College. Together they sculpted the land into paths, dams and ponds to create the park and when it opened they each went their separate ways. Frank was known to be a nice guy, but had a short fuse. Frank and his wife Alice lived in a house on the park grounds and Alice became the bookkeeper as she had been previously for Crooker and Simpson Construction.

Peter Footer who was Frank and Alice’s nephew was one of the first employees at the park working there for three years. He helped before the park was even open to the public, painting whatever needed paint with Frank’s favorite colors which were yellow and blue. Frank liked lead based Dutch Boy paint and wanted thick coats on everything.

Herbert Cavanaugh was one of the first people to work in the gift shop though Stanley Peterson and others helped out when things got busy. Many park employees were friends, neighbors or relatives.

Peter’s brother Georgie who was rather short ran the original steam locomotive. The original train ride was powered by a miniature live steam locomotive which eventually proved to be too difficult to operate reliably. It kept running out of steam when pulling the four-passenger cars that each had four riders. Frank bought an old blue Crosley automobile and had his neighbor Mr. Ivan Rines install the motor in a new modern- looking diesel locomotive

Mildred Simpson Stewart who was Frank’s niece got a surprise visit one morning from Uncle Frank to come cook at the snack bar. Millie wound up working at the park for the next three summers which paid her way through the University of Maine.

Since the park was right on the Androscoggin River, he took full advantage of the water as a draw for visitors. His first air boat was homemade and while it was wind-driven, it had a rudder that was in the water. It was made of plywood and the prop was solid wood and by aircraft standards was a bit on the crude side. Michael St. Pierre had the prop for many years and was kind enough to give it to me. The second air boat was one he purchased. His jet boat was commercially made and powered by a Ford Police Interceptor engine and must have been quite fast. Both air boats and jet boats are shallow draft and well suited to this area of the river as it has many sand bars and can be quite shallow depending on the tide.

A few years after the park opened Frank acquired an old 70-foot two masted schooner, the EVA S. CULLISON. It had been built in 1888 in Maryland and used both to transport fruit from the Bahamas and to fish oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Sometime in the late 1940’s it joined Captain Swift’s Windjammer Fleet in Penobscot Bay. By 1953-54 it was retired to Camden where it was immortalized by Jamie Wyeth in his painting Derelict Schooner Eva S. Cullison. The ship required constant pumping to keep her afloat and Frank’s wife Alice occasionally used Tampons to plug her leaks. The thick steel cables that held her to shore are still visible on the shore of the river. The Cullison also is the subject of a short booklet of the same name by Michael Parillo. She was 21′ in width, had 2 inch thick oak deck with masts 96ft. and 80ft. tall. The ship ended her life in Rockport harbor Massachusetts and was dismantled in 1964.

New Owners

On Dec. 22, 1976, August and Ursula Lauppe took over the park from Simpson who died in June of ’75. Gus as he was called, was a world class juggler from Germany who had a career that started in 1946. He’d juggle 5 big balls, up to eight rings and had an incredible repertoire that earned him a coveted award from a prestigious juggling association. He met Ursula Hill who had her own solo juggling career for ten years before the two got married in 1950. They performed with Laurel and Hardy for six months in London, did an international tour with them for four months later and then toured with the Harlem Globetrotters. When that tour ended in the U.S. they stayed here. They had a son Donald who also became a juggler. He had an act at the park twirling multiple plates on sticks to entertain the children who would always get excited when on of the plates was about to fall. Donald was not enthusiastic about working at the park but worked at Brunswick Walmart until he died in 2018.

There were many interesting stories about the animals and the bears seemed to escape often. One occurred in the winter when an escaped bear went out on the ice of the river and smelling the fish from the nearby smelt camps ventured toward them. The fishermen saw the bear coming and all jumped on the roofs of their pickup trucks until the animal left. When the bear finally left they got down but the bear returned again and up on the roofs they went. In 1990 a bear escaped and swam to the island across from the park. The authorities were notified and when the bear returned to shore he was shot with a tranquilizer which was not effective but angered the animal. It attacked and injured one of the hunters who shot the bear point blank. Another time Frank got a call from his neighbor Cliff Dolloff saying a bear was attacking his bee hives. Frank checked and the park’s bears were all accounted for. It turned out to be a wild bear and Dolloff shot it. Gus once got a call from the Brunswick Police saying two of his bears were at Cooks corner and he and Ursula walked the bears all the way back to the park. Bears were more popular circus animals in Europe than big the cats that were favored in this country and Gus had many types of bears. Gus would take the bear cubs to his home and train them in the basement.

Dr. Ray Youmans local veterinarian was called to the park for a lion who’d stopped eating and was very lethargic. He determined the animal was dehydrated,in septic shock and had been in labor for awhile/ He called me to come along for the immediate c section. It had become dark by then and just as the surgery was about to start the lights went out caused by a car hitting a nearby utility pole. After getting emergency lighting the surgery began but the cubs were were dead and the mother died soon after. Mike St. Pierre remembers “Elsa” as a friendly animal who was brought to the park as a malnourished cub and later paired with her mate “Sam”. Ray was also called to investigate the deaths of the llamas who were living in a fenced enclosure near the deer. He found the llamas had become infected with the same disease that more commonly affects the lining of deer brains. Ray was also asked to help tranquilize two bears when they were sold and needed to be moved.

The well known Maine painter and childrens book illustrator Dahlov Ipcar was a frequent visitor to visit the park using the park animals to inspire her colorful imaginative paintings. From the book The Art of Dahlov Ipcar by Carl Little P.54 “As a youngster, Ipcar had visited the Central Park and Bronx zoo and the Natural History Museum. She later sought out wild animal preserves in her adopted state, including Simpson’s Animal Park in Brunswick.”

On July 4th for many years the Maine country music star Ken MacKenzie and his wife Simone came to entertain. The park was busy each holiday with both parking lots filled to capacity.

The original opening of the park in May 1958 is covered very nicely by Paul Downing writing for The Times Record. He extols in glowing terms the features and attractions of the soon to be opened park.

Keeping the animals fed and healthy and maintaining the spacious grounds when the season was only three or four months long proved a large financial hardship. Gus was known to buy day old bakery goods from the Nissen Bakery Thrift Store on New Meadows Rd. to feed some of the animals. The very real difficulties of operating such a venture eventually proved too much and the park closed after its last season in 1983. On a recent walk through the park and buildings, Michael St. Pierre and I found an old shoe box containing eighteen boxes of 8mm movies of the park, some of Gus’s juggling balls, clubs and rings and the award he won for his past achievements. Gus’s equipment is now in a juggling museum in Ohio and the movies are being professionally evaluated and digitized. Gus Luappe died in 1998 and Gus died in 2003.

Simpson’s Animal Park was an attraction the likes of which are fast fading from the landscape. It was sort of a local institution like roadside “Tourist Cabins” one saw on older highways or billboards advertising cigarettes that were “so mild”. It was a light diversion from the day to day activities and now seems simple and innocent. The park is chronologically close enough to us in 2020 to be more nostalgia than history, but I’ve tried to capture some of the back stories from the people involved with the park when it was still operating.

My thanks to the following people for sharing their knowledge of the park and without whose contributions this article could not have been written: Ted Crooker, Peter Footer, Crystal Frost, Cathleen (St. Pierre) Jamison, Richard Snow, Michael St. Pierre, Mildred (Simpson) Stewart.

The land that was Simpson’s Animal Park is now privately owned and the present owners ask to respect their privacy.

Copy the Story Link

Comments are not available on this story.

« Previous

‘An uncomfortable conversation’: Topsham teacher eyes diversifying literature curriculum

Next »

Former Bowdoin College basketball standout Maddie Hasson playing in Ireland