A roaring Los Angeles story: When Southern California became the movie capital of the world, Hollywood Boulevard wasn’t the only attraction filling up with enthusiasts from around the globe. Several miles east of the bright lights lay another entertainment phenomenon unique to the region: a working farm filled with African lions. Gay’s Lion Farm offered visitors a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gaze upon dozens of full-grown lions roaming fenced enclosures, roar kingdoms like kings above the distant cityscape, and witness the spectacle of their trainers feeding these ferocious animals nearly a ton of raw meat every single day.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
Charles Gay established the lion farm east of Los Angeles in 1924, but he wasn’t new to the wild animal business. Born in France, Gay emigrated to the United States with his wife Muriel (also a trained animal handler) around 1914 and began working as a performer shortly after arriving in Southern California. Traveling the West Coast as part of a traveling circus, the Gays honed their skills, learning how to train lions and other exotic animals for the silver screen. By the mid-1920s, they had moved into Los Angeles and started working regularly with local movie studios, providing animal rentals and training animals specifically for use in motion pictures.
At first, Charles and Muriel Gay kept several lions near downtown Los Angeles at a small lot adjacent to Westlake Park. Spectators quickly took notice, flocking to view the exotic creatures while Charles conducted training demonstrations. Movie studios also took notice, realizing they could turn to Gay and his wife when they needed trained animals for movies. The Gays' enclosure soon became too small for the growing crowds, so they started looking for land of their own.
Gay found a suitable parcel of cheap, largely unregulated land outside El Monte in 1924. Nestled among orange groves near a junction along Valley Boulevard known as Peck Road, he established his new lion farm. Enormous cages were constructed in the shape of a wide U around a central arena where Gay could stage demonstrations. Other outbuildings included a nursery for cubs, feeding pens, and mock African outposts where visitors could take their photographs—by one account, construction costs tallied up to $25,000—a small fortune at the time.
Gay’s Lion Farm opened on July 1st, 1925, and was immediately marketed as a wonder beyond compare. Ads boasted it was the “World’s Only Lion Farm,” and in many ways, they weren’t kidding. Visitors could gaze in awe at dozens of powerful lions, animals rarely seen by average Americans. The lion population at Gay’s soon multiplied into the hundreds, establishing one of the largest concentrations of wild African lions in the United States.
Muriel and Charles Gay with their babies.
Gay kept busy supplying lions to movie studios during Hollywood’s golden age. His animals appeared in the earliest Tarzan films as well as numerous jungle and adventure films of the era, including Charlie Chaplin’s classic silent film The Circus. Some of the lions raised at Gay’s became household names in their own right. For example, two lions named Slats and Jackie starred in MGM’s roaring logo, appearing in photographs and film clips for decades. These lions, along with dozens more, became icons of early Hollywood.
An aerial view of Gay's Lion Farm in El Monte, California.
But Gay’s wasn’t simply a farm that bred animals for Hollywood. It also became one of Southern California’s biggest tourist attractions during its golden era. Automobiles and tour buses jammed the roads surrounding Valley Blvd as visitors drove out to witness exotic attractions few outside California could dream of seeing. Outdoor feeding demonstrations were major attractions, with visitors watching in awe as handlers shoveled raw horse meat into huge containers that would be unloaded before the lions’ cages. Charles Gay would sometimes enter the center ring armed only with a whip and pistol to prove he had tamed these mighty kings of the jungle.
Celebrities began to visit from around the world, among them Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. At least one famous visitor required some convincing: Swedish actress Greta Garbo once allowed herself to be photographed with a lion cub during a publicity stunt. Reportedly unaware of what species she was interacting with at first, Garbo allegedly refused to go inside the cage until her friends insisted everything was alright.
Gay’s Lion Farm soon became a civic treasure for the city of El Monte as well. El Monte High School took the name “Lions” as their athletic team moniker in 1925 and even fielded a live lion named Elmo as a mascot during games. Emblazoned across its chest was the nickname of the school and city it represented.
Shirley Ragland sits beneath the imposing lion statue that once served as the emblem of Gay’s Lion Farm. In 1950, following the attraction’s 1942 closure, founder Charles Gay presented the statue to the alumni of El Monte Union High School, where the lion became a lasting reminder of the community’s famous landmark.
The roadside attraction wasn’t without its thrills. While Charles and Muriel Gay were vacationing in Europe, one of the largest feedings at the farm took an unexpected turn. Workers left a cage gate open while transferring two lions. The gates opened onto a gravel road that ran alongside the property. One lion rampaged across the grounds, killing several guard dogs before being shot and killed by local police and workers. Another lion mauled the lone farm manager so badly that amputation of his leg was required.
To novelist James M. Cain, the incident was fodder for one of his stories; a plot that would later go on to inspire what we now know as The Postman Always Rings Twice. Despite setbacks like these, Gay’s Lion Farm thrived throughout the 1930s. Brochures boasted comparisons to the pyramids of Egypt and local newspapers declared it “the Disneyland of the 1920s and 1930s.” Guests dined among the cages and reportedly sampled lion meat during barbecues.
However, by 1942 the farm’s luck began to run out. Maintaining hundreds of wild lions was no small task even in peacetime. Thousands of pounds of meat had to be procured to keep the animals fed and healthy. But wartime meat shortages made it difficult for the Gays to keep the operation going, and in December 1942 they reluctantly closed the establishment for good. Though they intended to reopen once the war was over, it wasn’t meant to be. By the late 1940s, Charles Gay had suffered a serious illness that kept him from restoring his farm. He passed away in 1950.
In December 1942, Gay’s Lion Farm closed its gates as wartime meat rationing made it increasingly difficult to obtain the enormous quantities of food needed to feed its lions.
Gay’s Lion Farm closed in 1942 with the expectation that it would reopen after the war. The property remained for several years, but Charles Gay’s declining health ended hopes of reviving the famous attraction.
Meanwhile, the landscape of El Monte was changing. The open farmland that surrounded Gay’s property soon vanished under highways and tract homes. In the 1950s, construction crews leveled much of the original lion farm to make way for Interstate 10, which runs directly through the center of where Gay’s enclosure once stood. Today, remnants of the attraction mostly exist beneath the freeway’s sprawling interchange at Valley Blvd and Peck Road.
The former site of Gay’s Lion Farm now lies beneath and alongside the San Bernardino Freeway (Interstate 10). A historical marker commemorating the once-famous attraction stands beside the freeway and can still be viewed through the fence from the adjacent street. (Photo: Historical Marker Database)
Originally located at Gay’s Lion Farm, this lion statue became tied to El Monte High School after the school adopted the Lions as its team name in 1925. After the Lion Farm closed in 1942, the statue was donated to the school in 1950, preserving a lasting link to one of El Monte’s most famous attractions. (Photo: Historical Marker Database)
Bronze statues of lions still stand guard in honor of the farm that once existed there. One full-sized likeness now resides outside El Monte High School, while another historical marker commemorates the land near the freeway overpass. For nearly twenty years, lions prowled their acreage and attracted visitors from around the world, not to mention giving Hollywood some of its most recognizable animal performers.
Gay's Lion Farm did not quietly close in 1942 and fade away. It went into what Charles Gay had planned as a wartime dormancy. Ownership of the property lingered for years thereafter with hopes that it might reopen, and it was failing health rather than just wartime rationing that kept the Lion Farm from returning. The freeway would eventually come and wash away most traces of the place itself. Today, the memory of Gay’s Lion Farm remains one of Southern California’s quirkiest stories, when hundreds of lions ruled five acres of land just a short drive from Hollywood.
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