A pavilion-style outdoor museum and zoo built by Company 249 of the Civilian Conservation Corps was among the first completed projects in Allegany State Park and opened on October 1, 1933. Its concrete center tanks held fish and turtles, while cages and other exhibits stood on walls or hung from overhead supports, and nearby were a snake pit and a bear den, both still visible near the ruins. Open only during the summer, it exhibited local animals, rocks, insects, and fungi, and captive animals were released back into the wild at the end of each season. The rectangular building, 25 feet wide and 40 feet long, was concealed by huge sugar maples and built of vari-colored sandstone foundations and walls rising 3 1/2 feet, with chestnut poles, chestnut and black cherry trusses, and thick-butted shake shingles. In the center was a series of pits with dry platforms and water, screened for animals needing both environments. Irving Knobloch, a National Park Service naturalist later a botany professor at the University of Michigan, oversaw trail development projects by Company 249, including a nearby nature trail now called Red Jacket Trail. The fenced bear den may have predated the museum and first housed Cubby and Suzie, cubs rescued after a forest fire in the Crick's Run area separated them from their mother. On opening day, the exhibits included a racoon, a skunk, a woodchuck, a porcupine, a chipmunk, five kinds of turtles, five kinds of snakes, toads, frogs, salamanders, and special displays on nature.