WGAS Anyway?

There was a period of time during which monorails were in vogue among the larger American zoos, many of which are now out of service.  Dallas Zoo had it's Wild of Africa monorail, which took visitors across a variety of African biomes to see different ungulates.  Minnesota Zoo's monorail followed its enormous Northern Trail yards, sparing visitors nearly a mile's worth of trail and offering panoramic views of hardy northern hoofstock.  Without a doubt, though, the most celebrated of the monorails was the Wgasa Bush Line of the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

With individual paddocks larger than many entire urban zoos, the San Diego Wild Animal Park was (and perhaps still is) as close to Africa as many zoo visitors will get.  The only ways to appreciate the size and diversity of these yards was either 1) book a photo caravan tour, in which visitors could be driven out into the middle of the paddocks in the bed of a truck, given closeup encounters with rhinos, giraffes, and other ungulates, or 2) take a monorail.  My first time to San Diego, I did both.  Both experiences were incredible, but the monorail, while not as intimate as the photo caravan, was still magical.  I saw many species for the first time on that train, some of which I haven't seen since.  I took the hour-long ride twice that day, and given the option, I probably could have gone two or three times more.

What goes "Wgasa" mean, though?  The zoo legend, which I've never found any real evidence to contradict, is that the planners of the monorail couldn't come up with a good name for it, something sound African, if not actually from an African language.  Then, at the bottom of a memo that sent out looking for ideas, they saw five letters scrawled - WGASA.  They loved it, and the name was adopted.

It was only later that they discovered that it wasn't an African word, or even a word at all.  It was an acronym - and not even one that was meant to be a suggested name.  What the writer (reported to be Chuck Faust, Chief Designer of the San Diego Zoo) had meant to convey was - "Who Gives A Shit, Anyway?"  By that point, however, the name was out there and in use.  When asked by the press, the tongue-in-check Faust replied that it was the "World's Greatest Animal Show Anywhere."

The Bush Line has been out of service for years, meaning that parts of San Diego's vast acreage are currently off-exhibit.  I've heard rumors that a replacement could be coming back - but if it does, I wonder what name it will carry.

Photo Source: Fact Republic