Corbin's Animal Garden

 Mary Kronenwetter presents Corbin’s Animal Garden on

September 16 th at 10am.

In the late 1800s, the banking, railroad, and real estate mogul Austin

Corbin returned to his hometown in Newport, New Hampshire. He built

a grand estate and bought out his neighbors’ farms to create an 22,000

acre wildlife game preserve stocked with boar, bison, bighorn sheep,

antelope, elk, Chinese pheasant, and other imported animals. The grounds

eventually became a prestigious private hunting park and hosted illustrious

guests including Theodore Roosevelt, the Prince of Wales, Cornelius

Vanderbilt, Joe Dimaggio, Rudyard Kipling, and Augustus Saint Gaudens.

This illustrated slideshow features archival images and a discussion of the

complicated history and legacy of New Hampshire’s own American Gilded

Age robber baron. The talk will also highlight the important legacy of the

role the Corbin family and park naturalist Ernest Baynes played in the

saving of the American bison from extinction.

This program is free and open to the public.