A resonant true story of small-town politics and community perseverance and of decent people and questionable choices, Zoo Nebraska is a timely requiem for a rural America in the throes of extinction.
As the tourist trade multiplied, so did the inhabitants of what would become Zoo Nebraska, the unlikeliest boon to Royal\'s economy in generations and, eventually, the source of a power struggle that would lead to the tragic implosion of Dick Haskin\'s dream..
He returned to his hometown with Reuben, an adolescent chimp, in the bed of a pickup truck and transformed a trailer home into the Midwest Primate Center.
When Dick Haskin\'s plans to assist primatologist Dian Fossey in Rwanda were cut short by her murder, Dick\'s devotion to primates didn\'t die with her.
And it all began with one man\'s outsize vision.
But for nearly twenty years, they had a zoo, seven acres that rose from local peculiarity to key tourist attraction to devastating tragedy.
Royal, Nebraska, population eighty-one--where the church, high school, and post office each stand abandoned, monuments to a Great Plains town that never flourished.
A resonant true story of small-town politics and community perseverance and of decent people and questionable choices, Zoo Nebraska is a timely requiem for a rural America in the throes of extinction
