The old Catskill Game Farm was once among the nation’s largest private zoos.
The Old Catskill Game Farm
CATSKILL — Memories of the Catskill Game Farm tend to carry plenty of nostalgia for locals who visited the family-owned petting zoo during its 73 years in operation. But a new documentary turns a spotlight on a particularly dark corner of the tourist attraction’s history.
“American Zoo” had its U.S. premiere on June 4 at the Tribeca Film Festival. Directed by British filmmaker Tim Travers Hawkins, the film uses footage Travers Hawkins discovered in 2022 during a visit to the former zoo to explore its troubled past — including links to a Nazi-era animal-breeding program aimed at reviving extinct animal species.
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“When I was first looking at the film, I absolutely had no idea it was going to lead me to a Nazi breeding program,” Travers Hawkins, a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker, said in an interview with the Times Union.
Opened in 1933 by German immigrant Roland Lindemann, the Catskill Game Farm became the nation’s first privately owned zoo in 1958. Over its seven decades of operation, the Game Farm’s menagerie grew to approximately 2,000 animals and 150 species.
In addition to being a major tourist attraction in the Catskills, the Game Farm had breeding programs to supply animals to other zoos — and, apparently, to bring animals back from extinction.
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Through the found footage and numerous interviews with former gamekeepers and descendants, Travers Hawkins was able to piece together the history of the two main families at the core of the operation: the Lindemanns and the Hecks.
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German scientist Heinz Heck Jr. first entered the picture in 1959, according to The Overlook, which first reported on the film’s premiere. Heinz’s father, Lutz Heck, a scientist and regular visitor to the Game Farm, had worked under and was “best friends” with Nazi leader Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler’s second in command during World War II, Travers Hawkins said.
After joining the farm’s staff, Heinz began experimenting on animals in an attempt to breed extinct species back into existence, including a type of wild cattle once found in Europe known as an auroch. Heinz’s experiments led to a series of genetic birth defects in many of the zoo’s animals.
Travers Hawkins’ research led him to the archives of the Berlin Zoo and to the home of Heinz’s daughter, Margaret, in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he uncovered records of the experiments. Given the Heck family’s reputation in the zoological world and interviews with gamekeepers from the time, Lindemann most likely knew about the experiments, Travers Hawkins said.
“Lindemann was an entrepreneur,” he said. “He was clearly a man who loved animals, but I think some would question the way he loved animals, especially today.”
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Catskill Game Farm founder Roland Lindemann is seen at the zoo on Aug. 11, 1980.
Times Union archive
Lindemann’s daughter, Kathie Schulz — who owned the farm from 1989 until its closure in 2006 and was interviewed for the film — said she was not aware of the experiments until after the fact, Travers Hawkins said, adding that she would have been young at the time.
In addition to the revelations about the breeding experiments, “American Zoo” sheds light on the families who worked at, visited and cherished the Game Farm for generations.
“If you had worked there a long time — and most of them had — it was kind of a family,” Travers Hawkins said.
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Although the pay was little, the workers were passionate about their jobs.
“If you love working with animals, this is a calling in life, and Lindemann made a place to do that,” Travers Hawkins said. “He made a business that was unique for that area and another lifestyle they wouldn’t have otherwise had.”
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The Catskill Game Farm’s decline and rebirth
After the game farm closed its doors nearly two decades ago, the animals were auctioned off, including April the Giraffe, who went on to become a YouTube star when the birth of her son was livestreamed in 2017 from her final home, Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville.
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The property sat vacant for many years before it was purchased by a local couple in 2012. Cathy and Ben Ballone, who grew up in East Durham and New Jersey, respectively, had fond memories of visiting the Game Farm as children.
After extensive renovations, the former giraffe house was transformed into the Long Neck Inn, which opened in 2019. The Ballones also added four Tentrr “glamping” sites to the property, offered self-guided tours, and had dreams of establishing a campground and RV park.
After nine years of owning the property, the Ballones decided to put it up for sale. In late 2020, the Game Farm was sold to a group of investors for $1.9 million, who continue to rent the Long Neck Inn and Tentrr sites.
The Game Farm was listed for sale again in January 2022 for $3.6 million. After a sale to a nonprofit seeking to establish a residential community for adults with autism fell through, the 193 acres were divided up into smaller parcels, which remain on the market except for the Long Neck Inn.
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Patrons head to the ticket booth at the Catskill Game Farm in 2006, on the second-to-last day of its existence.
Philip Kamrass/Times Union archive
“American Zoo” puts a lens on the difficulty of reconciling the zoo’s rich history and pleasant memories for so many visitors with the darker elements of its past that remained largely unknown until recent years. That past also includes questionable treatment — both morally and legally — of the zoo’s animals and their capture by the Lindemann family, as seen in the footage Hawkins recovered from an abandoned gift shop at the former farm.
“That’s the way things were done back then,” Travers Hawkins said, adding that the film sheds light on the legacy of colonialism. “They could just go and essentially raid the wild and take basically what they wanted.”
The film is not intended to be an exposé, Travers Hawkins said, but rather a complex story about the zoo’s history and the different families whose lives had intersected there. While there are no public screenings of “American Zoo” scheduled currently, Travers Hawkins intends to bring the film to a wider audience, including local theaters, soon.
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“I’m not trying to draw too many moral conclusions,” he said. “I want the audience to do that for themselves.”
For Shawn Johnson, general manager of the Old Game Farm — the property’s current name — the film does not alter his fond childhood memories.
“Tim did a great job directing it and doing a well-rounded documentary,” said Johnson, who attended the premiere. “I hope this doesn’t mar anybody’s image of (the Game Farm).”
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In addition to overnight lodging and glamping, the Old Game Farm is also available for weddings, family reunions and other private events.
“There are a lot of good memories made here still,” Johnson said.