could only been seen from the train, reminiscent of the Old West. The railroad was dismantled in the mid-1980s, although the pathways once used by the train still exist as roads for service vehicles, as does the North Gate station (since converted into a snack stand) In the early 21st century, the zoo has undergone significant capital upgrades, constructing the Hamill Family Play Zoo, Regenstein Wolf Woods, butterfly tent, sheltered group catering pavilions, and the largest non-restored, hand-carved, wooden carousel in the United States. Great Bear Wilderness, a new, $27.3 million sprawling exhibit for grizzly and polar bears, opened in 2010. The interiors of several existing buildings were reconfigured into immersion exhibits, based upon ecosystems rather than by clades; these include the Living Coast (the shores of Chile and Peru), the Swamp, the Clouded Leopard Rain Forest, Desert's Edge, the African Savanna and Forest, and Australia House. The zoo's reptile house, the first building to open in 1934, closed in 2005 and was converted into the Mary Ann McLean Conservation Leadership Center which does not display live animals, but it details the zoo's larger conservation mission. Because of the expense of constructing Great Bear Wilderness and protests from In Defense of Animals over the deaths of the zoo's African elephants, the Pachyderm House was closed for a year in 2011 for modifications and no longer exhibits elephants or river hippopotamuses. The Children's Zoo, which opened in August 1953, was dismantled in early 2013, and a new family-based series of exhibits known as Wild Encounters opened on the site on July 1, 2015, which features a red panda, a herd of reindeer, 2 Llamas, Bennet's wallabies, 22 Nigerian dwarf goats, and a free-flight parakeet aviary. The Pachyderm building also has a pygmy hippo named 'Banana' who arrived at the zoo in May 2022 after an old female hippo passed away in June 2021. The Brookfield Zoo is also known for its majestic fountain named after the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. On some days, the fountain's spouting water can reach up to 60 feet high. The zoo has been closed only five times in its history: On September 14, 2008, after damage from a weekend rainstorm; on February 2, 2011, after a major blizzard; on April 18–19, 2013, after flooding from a severe rainstorm; January 30–31, 2019, due to below-freezing temperatures; and from March 19 to July 1,