Gatorland at 75: It’s a family business that’s long in the tooth

Before there was Walt Disney World or the Daytona 500 or Interstate 4, there was Gatorland.

The roadside attraction, presenting reptiles and “real Florida,” was started by Owen Godwin, and his family continues to run the business, which is now marking its 75th anniversary on South Orange Blossom Trail.

Aside from being an Orlando entrepreneur, Godwin could have listed adventurer and entertainer on his resume.

“He was definitely a character. He was a lot of fun to be around,” says Diane McHugh, Godwin’s granddaughter and one of the family members involved in Gatorland’s operation today.

“He learned that there was a role for entertainment, and if he could assume that kind of safari persona, that people would be mesmerized,” she says. “I don’t ever remember him in the park without his snake boots on. And he had a leopard vest, jodhpurs, a pith helmet or something like that.”

Diane McHugh recalls her childhood at Gatorland being filled with adventures such as feeding monkeys, being chased by roosters and rounding up alligators. She swam in the lakes and rode her bicycle on the attraction’s sidewalks.

“This was the world’s best playground when you were little. … We had ostriches that we could try to ride. It was all forest in the back, so we made forts,” she says. “My cousin Gay and I, we always did extremely crazy things like put snakes down our sleeves and then let them crawl out next to people on the boardwalk.”

She also remembers manning the donation tray at the exit. Gatorland offered free admission until 1970, when they started selling tickets for $1 (50 cents for children).

“He [Godwin] would not hesitate to follow someone out into the parking lot and ask why they didn’t leave any money. ‘Did you not enjoy it? Was there a problem?’” Diane McHugh said. “That’s how they lived at the time. You had all the animals to feed; you had families to feed and employees to pay.”

The early years were hard work for Owen Godwin, his wife Pearl and their four children, including Frank Godwin, who would eventually become Gatorland’s president and Diane McHugh’s father. The Godwins planted Australian pines across the back of the property by hand, and watered them too, Diane McHugh says.

And for a while, Owen and his family lived on the property. A door in the gift shop opened right into the family kitchen. Diane McHugh remembers the scent of her grandmother’s cooking wafting into the retail space on Sundays. (Both a restaurant and an alligator are named after Pearl Godwin at Gatorland today.)

About a dozen years after Gatorland’s debut, the entrance got a makeover that would become an iconic Orlando look. Visitors would now walk through a structure that looked like a way-larger-than-life alligator mouth, complete with pointy teeth. It was Frank Godwin’s idea, and it became a vacation photo sensation.

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“He set an alligator skull on the table in his dining room and looked at it for weeks and weeks to get the design right,” says Mark McHugh, the current Gatorland president and CEO, as well as the husband of Diane McHugh. “It really is kind of a marvel of engineering because it’s got that big ol’ open mouth that sits up there, but there’s no tie-backs.”

In the late 1950s and early ‘60s, Owen Godwin traveled to Africa, India and Alaska, looking to purchase more animals. The menagerie eventually included pythons, boa constrictors, zebras, pygmy hippos, llamas, emus, capybaras and more. Godwin frequently gave talks and showed home movies from his travels to schools and civic organizations.

“When they first started Gatorland, he [Godwin] had the vision of showing people the real Florida. He transplanted palm trees in here. He puts the flamingos in with the alligators,” Mark McHugh says.

“Then he started doing those travels and safaris and bringing back all these exotic animals, and it became more of a zoo,” Mark McHugh says. “In the early ‘90s, we started migrating back to that real Florida experience we want people to have.”

Mark McHugh’s first trip to Gatorland was on his first date with his future wife, Diane. It was 1985, and they were both working as animal trainers at SeaWorld Orlando.

He recalls her reaching into a pool and picking out a 3-foot gator.

“It’s trying to bite her and it’s kicking, and she shoves it at me,” he says. “She throws it back in there. She looks at me and goes, ‘Your turn.’”

He feared not getting another outing with her, he says. “I did it and didn’t get bit. And I got a second date,” he says and smiles. “It worked out.”

In 1996, Frank Godwin retired. The attraction used professional headhunters to fill the position for several months, Mark McHugh says.

“They couldn’t find the right person,” he says. “After about six months, I raised my hand and said, ‘Well, hey, I’ll give it a whirl.’”

His father-in-law wanted to keep Gatorland in the family, but “he made it clear to me that just because you’re family doesn’t mean we won’t fire you if you don’t do a good job,” Mark McHugh says.

Over the past several years, the attraction has added outdoorsy activities and annual events to its lineup.

“Teenagers were getting bored just looking at animals. We needed something for that demographic and for everyone to do,” Mark McHugh says. They installed the Screamin’ Gator Zip Line in 2011.

“It’s not mechanical. It’s low-tech, high-touch. Traveling over alligators is exciting. … It just fit us to a T,” he says.

Other additions include a swamp-buggy experience called the Stompin’ Gator Off-Road Adventure, a rock wall and enhanced animal exhibits such as the Baby Gator Swamp and the recently completed White Gator Swamp, which showcases Mystic, the only leucistic alligator ever hatched outside of the swamps of Louisiana.

Chelsea McHugh, daughter of Diane and Mark, has been involved in these developments. She’s a member of the fourth generation in the family business, getting her start in the gift shop while still in high school. She went to college, worked on the opening team for the zip line, but then ventured into wedding and event planning, she says.

“I wasn’t super-sold on Gatorland,” she says. Then, she did contract work with her mother on facilities, and in 2014, there was an opening in the animal-care department.

“I wound up falling in love with it and stayed there for three years in that department,” Chelsea McHugh says. She’s now the director of special projects for Gatorland.

“I love it. I don’t want to do anything else,” she says.

“They design and build our animal exhibits,” Mark McHugh says of his wife and daughter. “We’ve got some gorgeous animal exhibits, construction projects, maintenance projects. They run a full-time independent construction crew out there and do some amazing things. … The quality of their exhibits that they build with would match anything you’d see in a large municipal zoo.”

Diane McHugh brushes aside any reference to what her Gatorland position is.

“Here at Gatorland, I’ve just never been into the title. .. I do a little bit of everything,” she says. That includes picking up trash or bagging popcorn if need be.

“You just make sure the park is running as well as it should,” she says. “You just kind of float around between your projects.”

She worked as a lifeguard as a teenager at Wet ‘n’ Wild water park on International Drive, and she worked at SeaWorld parks in San Diego, San Antonio and Orlando.

“So, it’s always been a theme park. So, you know how they should operate. You know how they should look. You know they should be clean. And that’s what you look for every day,” she says.

The McHughs have day-to-day responsibilities, and other descendants of founder Owen Godwin are on the Gatorland board.

“It’s kind of a mini-reunion every quarter,” Diane McHugh says. “That’s their direct link to being involved in the business because, as a board, you set precedents. … It’s nice to have that kind of unifying factor where a lot of the family is involved in it.”

Mark McHugh says the board includes a handful of non-relatives and three members of the next generation. The park planning committee is also multigenerational.

“We’re in the transition from the governance standpoint of the company into the fourth generation,” he says.

“It’s kind of cool to finally feel like there’s a little bit of a transition,” Chelsea McHugh says. “I’m getting older, so I don’t feel like as much of a kid anymore. I feel like it’s more responsibility now.”

The Gatorland family makes plans for the future of the attraction.

“We’re always growing. We don’t necessarily go to outside organizations to come and give us master plans, big huge pretty glossy books of master plans,” Mark McHugh says.

“Frank still comes out here a lot,” he says. “Utilizing Frank and the second generation, all the experience that we have as the third generation and then the fourth generation that understands how millennials think. It’s a different animal from us baby boomers.”

When Owen Godwin purchased the land along Orange Blossom Trail in the 1940s, the Gatorland site — now at 110 acres — was in a rural stretch between Orlando and Kissimmee. Now there are restaurants, retail, storage units, highways, Hunters Creek and the rest of suburbia within shouting distance.

“The land, at some point, if not already, will become more valuable than the attraction,” Mark McHugh says.

“But we love the attraction,” he says. “Yeah, it’s in our blood.”