Ahead of its much-anticipated debut at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, construction continued this spring on a state-of-the-art facility for giraffes, the treasured animal in the zoo’s logo and in the hearts of visitors, who soon will be able to interact with the herd in a whole new way.

And high on the mountain overlooking the progress stood the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun, overlooking as ever since 1939. That’s when Spencer Penrose was entombed in the tower, forever to watch over his creations that continue to be popular destinations in Colorado Springs: The Broadmoor and the adjacent mountainside home of the animals he loved.

The prevailing sight of the tower is not lost on the man who has long been in charge at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

“I often feel like I still work for Penrose,” said Bob Chastain, the president and CEO who is nearing retirement after about 30 years here. “And I often like to believe this would have exceeded his expectations.”

Penrose could not have expected something like the International Center for the Care and Conservation of Giraffe — the latest and greatest development for Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in this milestone summer.

The center is set to open just in time for the zoo’s 100th anniversary. 

While the road Penrose built through the entrance has been relocated for the center and reimagined plaza, what the visionary built has not been forgotten. Not by Dave Ruhl, the zoo’s incoming president and CEO.

“How it all got started with Spencer Penrose, it’s an interesting story for sure,” Ruhl said.

It’s a story that predates 1926, when the zoo opened with pens of deer, elk, bears and more lining the Cheyenne Mountain Highway that rose to a lodge frequented by Broadmoor guests. It’s a story that might predate the hotel’s opening in 1918, going somewhere back to the builder’s love for animals.

Well known is Penrose’s love for horses, explaining the local rodeo and polo history. Lesser known is the love he had for far more exotic creatures, a fact made clear from Ashley Arimborgo’s research over the years.

Arimborgo spent years at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo before her current post at Penrose Heritage Museum. The jobs have given her access to letters in which Penrose made such inquiries as to the diet of a polar bear and the availability of an emperor tamarin (a peculiar Amazonian monkey) and of a cassowary (an ostrichlike bird native to the tropics of New Guinea).

“He’d do his research,” Arimborgo said, “and from there, he’d be like, I like that animal …”

Penrose liked horses, cattle, mules, hogs and sheep — hundreds of which occupied his Turkey Creek Ranch by 1923, as detailed in a new exhibit at Penrose Heritage Museum.

The exhibit notes: “Over the next few years, with guidance from his brother, Dr. Charles Penrose, who served as president of the Philadelphia Zoological Society, Spencer Penrose created his own personal menagerie — a collection of wild animals kept for entertainment.”

So began a colorful chapter at The Broadmoor. Just as travelers from afar got to know an emerging city, they also got to know surprising animals that lived around the hotel’s lush, opulent grounds.

On the golf course, Tessie the elephant was “well-loved, occasionally serving as a golf caddy,” according to history compiled by the zoo. That history also records Johnny the boa constrictor living in the basement, “near the water pipes to stay warm during the winter.”

One picture shows Penrose with Ethel the camel. Another shows a leashed black bear cub scaling a tree on the hotel lawn. On the lake, another shows sea lions greeting guests on boats. And other images over the years show Penrose and his wife, Julie, with water buffalo, llamas, lions, tigers, monkeys and more from an animal kingdom stretching far beyond Colorado.

As his old letters suggest, Penrose’s menagerie grew through connections that the high-powered, world-traveling businessman made over the years. Though, no, Tessie the elephant was not a gift from a maharaja of India, as Penrose claimed, ever the showman.

But, yes, it does appear that the retired circus animal was welcome on The Broadmoor’s golf course — until she wasn’t, along with other animals kept along the greens.

It was determined that their presence would not be suited for the 1927 Trans-Mississippi Tournament. That prompted the animals’ move to the Cheyenne Mountain Highway in 1926. (As to claims that a monkey biting a boy’s nose at the hotel led to the move, Penrose Heritage Museum refers to this as “part of the lore that defined the zoo’s early years.”)

The early years saw Penrose often riding his horse up to the zoo to “make sure the animals looked good and were eating good,” Arimborgo said. He hired people to ensure this, but indeed, “he was very hands-on.”

So much so that at his house, Penrose bottle-fed “three baby antelope,” as he called the pronghorns in a letter to a Fish and Game commissioner in 1932. This was while “yesterday I put a new man in charge of the zoo, and I want him to get broken in before I give him any new responsibilities,” the letter said. The former superintendent, Penrose added, “was fairly good with the lions and elephant, etc., but he was very shiftless and ignorant, and I have been considerably provoked since he lost the last antelope.”

That was Penrose — “very direct,” Arimborgo said. And also very caring of the animals, she noted — perhaps a credit to the lions breeding 16 cubs between 1929 and 1934, and the zoo reportedly being the first in the country to breed musk oxen in 1937.

That decade saw Penrose seek other advancements. He sent the zoo’s superintendent to Detroit to study innovative lion and bear exhibits. And he hired specialists from American Museum of Natural History and Denver Museum of Nature and Science to conduct fieldwork and research that was not all that common for zoos at the time.

By then, Penrose’s health was declining. He succumbed to throat cancer in 1939.

Before his death, he incorporated the zoo into the nonprofit it is today. This ensured the zoo would not be run by owners of varying intents, but rather by a board continuing his vision. His widow would chair that board and continue to welcome new residents.

Julie went to the Denver airport to pick up Jiggs the baby orangutan in 1948. That same year, she met Bud the baby gorilla — said to be the first of his kind at a zoo west of the Mississippi. The zoo celebrated more additions over the decades, leading to today’s population of about 750 animals.

Perhaps the most celebrated, the giraffes, joined the scene in 1954. Julie died a couple of years later, but not before stipulating that the philanthropic arm set up to preserve the Penrose legacy and fortune continue to support the zoo.

So El Pomar Foundation does today. What would Penrose think in this 100th anniversary year?

“He’d really appreciate the continued values for excellence and innovation, and continuing that trend of being ahead of the curve,” said Erin Hannan, El Pomar’s senior vice president of communications.

Perhaps that’s best symbolized by the International Center for the Care and Conservation of Giraffe.

Where visitors have long met giraffes face-to-face with lettuce in hand, now they’ll get to roam varying elevations to also feed the animals from overhead and below near their hooves. The giraffes will get to roam more freely as well, in and out of the facility with a high-tech, see-through roof, heating and rain systems, and wide-open passage to another sweeping “environment” built outside.

The design is meant to foster healthy movement and living, explained Ruhl, who has overseen the project over the years as the zoo’s vice president of operations. But “it’s really Bob’s legacy project,” he said, referring to the retiring president and CEO.

Over nearly 30 years, Chastain led several projects that made the zoo what it is today. Annual visitation more than doubled during his time, to 800,000-plus counted in recent years. But he sounds most proud about advancements in care, science and conservation at the zoo, where quarter-collecting kiosks he started have raised $6 million toward wildlife initiatives.

“I understand the dynamic between wanting animals in the wild and free, but I’ve also been around enough to know being in the wild is not always fun. It’s hard,” Chastain said. For threatened species seen here, “I also know the zoo can be the only place for people to learn what their plight is, and how they might be able to help.”

And just as much as it’s always been about animals, he said, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo has been about people — from Penrose to caretakers to volunteers and board members over generations. “It’s like a giant social experiment,” Chastain said, involving many backgrounds and personalities. “But we can all come together and work for the benefit of the animals.”

People and animals have come and gone over the years, but leadership has hardly changed. Ruhl will be the seventh president and CEO. 

As he looked around at the scenic mountainside that Penrose settled, at that tower looking over smiling visitors, Ruhl too smiled. “Once you get here, you want to stay forever.”