The Zoo That Grew Up With Loudoun

In 1999, Bob and Shirley Johnson bought 22 acres on Route 15, just south of Leesburg. The fields were overgrown. The only building on the land was a small farm stand.

They drew up a master plan, put up a building, and started making a park, one season at a time. Today it's home to zebras, camels, gibbons, sloths and wallabies, a barn full of animals who expect to be fed, and a tortoise named Jethro who was about 120 years old at the park's 25th birthday.

Loudoun had about 170,000 people that year. It has about 461,000 now. The county grew up around the park, and the park grew up with the county.

Leesburg Animal Park is a family business, and it shows. The Johnsons' three children grew up with the park, feeding baby parrots in the kitchen and getting up before dawn when a newborn animal needed help. They're grown now, and they're carrying on the work.

The family's habit of bringing animals to kids goes back further than Route 15. The park's Zoo-To-You program has been taking animals to fairs and festivals for 40 years, by the park's count, and still turns up at birthday parties and school events across the region.

Between 2000 and 2008, Loudoun grew by 71 percent and became one of the fastest-growing counties in America. The fields along Route 15 filled in with houses, and the families in them needed somewhere to take the kids on a Saturday. The park kept giving them reasons to come.

Over the years that has meant a new petting and feeding barn for the llamas, sheep, goats and donkeys, a forest trail, a bigger home for the gibbons and a walk-through wallaby exhibit. Indoors there's a play zone, a crafts area and animal exhibits, so a cold or wet morning still works.

The calendar grew too. There are Easter egg hunts in spring, Jr. Zookeeper camps in the summer and on school holidays, fishing derbies, birthday parties and field trips, then Pumpkin Village every fall and Christmas Village in December.

In the spring of 2020, when the pandemic shut the county down, the park found a way to stay open. It became Loudoun's first drive-through zoo, with families steering past the animals on weekends.

In May 2025, the park celebrated 25 years in Leesburg. A delegate read a proclamation from the Virginia General Assembly, Leesburg's mayor came to say congratulations, and a county economic development official remembered visiting as a young child. The delegate said he has been coming since it opened, and now brings his grandchildren.

Today there are zebras, lemurs, gibbons, camels, porcupines, sloths and wallabies, and a barn full of animals that expect to be fed. The park says it's built for ages 2 to 10, and in our experience 2-to-10-year-olds agree. One visitor this year found the younger end of that range gets the most out of it.

Two residents have been part of the story from the start. Jethro and Jade, the park's Aldabra tortoises, have been with the family since before Route 15, and they've watched the county grow up around them ever since. At roughly 120, Jethro is taking all of it in stride.

Every fall it runs Pumpkin Village; this year's runs through 8 November, with giant hill slides, a zip line, pedal carts, wagon rides and moon bounces on top of the animals. In December it opens at night for Christmas Village: thousands of lights, illuminated hill slides, Santa, a bonfire for s'mores, and the animals in a lit-up barn.

Loudoun has far more to do on a Saturday than it did in 1999. Most of it didn't exist then. This did, and it hasn't stood still: new barns, new trails, new animals, and a calendar that now runs from egg hunts to Christmas lights.

It's still a family business, run by people who grew up feeding baby parrots in the kitchen. The kids who came in those first years are bringing kids of their own now. That's the kind of growth you can't put on a chart.