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1994–1996
The dome: In 1994 the zoo opened the Indonesian Rain Forest, a domed exhibit whose walk-through aviary put visitors inside a working rain forest of birds, fish and reptiles. It was the first of three builds in three years that gave the zoo its modern three-continent shape beside the Central Zoo and Australia. The dome still stands, under its third name, in the Asian Trek told below.
The carousel: The rain forest carried a one-of-a-kind machine. The Endangered Species Carousel, part of the Indonesian Rain Forest exhibit, was commissioned by the zoo from the Carousel Works of Mansfield, Ohio — hand-carved, hand-painted animals and birds from the endangered species list, a Javan peafowl, a tapir and a spotted leopard among them. The News-Sentinel's Summit City History Notes recorded it on 16 July 1996, noting that it replaced an earlier carousel that had operated at the zoo for a while, a metal Theel machine made in Leavenworth, Kansas.
The valley and the forest: Orangutan Valley opened a year after the dome, in 1995 — the exhibit that made the zoo a breeding institution of record when the male orangutan Tengku arrived from Zoo Atlanta that same year. Tiger Forest followed in 1996, housing the Sumatran tigers. The three builds closed the zoo's expansion century: Veldt, Australia, and now Indonesia — Africa, Australia and Asia around the Central Zoo core.
Sources:
- Fort Wayne Zoo, published history (the domed Indonesian Rain Forest opened 1994; Orangutan Valley 1995; Tiger Forest 1996), as carried in the zoo's history record.
- News-Sentinel, Summit City History Notes, 16 July 1996 (the Endangered Species Carousel — one-of-a-kind, Carousel Works of Mansfield, Ohio; part of the Indonesian Rain Forest exhibit opened in 1994; the Theel machine it replaced), via the News-Sentinel's Fort Wayne history pages.