LONG BEACH >> Surrounded by neat little houses, Grace Park in North Long Beach is a small patch of green enjoyed by families who likely know little of the park’s snake lady namesake and her tragic death.
Grace Park, located near Plymouth Street and Elm Avenue, is named for Grace Olive Wiley, a snake expert and trainer. The park was to have been named Grace Wiley Park but it was shortened to Grace Park, suitably marking both the namesake and the Church of Latter Day Saints that once sat on the property before the city acquired it.
Known as The Snake Lady, Wiley earned national recognition for her collection of reptiles and venomous snakes. Some of her snakes were featured in films such as “The Jungle Book” and “Cobra Woman.” Wiley herself appeared as a snake charmer in the film “Moon Over Burma,” starring Dorothy Lamour.
Born in Chanute, Kan., in 1883, Wiley, who has been described as headstrong in many biographical accounts, attended the University of Kansas at a time when very few women sought out a higher education.
She began collecting and observing rattlesnakes while doing fieldwork in the Southwest, and within a few years she became the first person to successfully breed rattlesnakes in captivity. In 1923, she was named a curator at the Minneapolis Public Library’s extensive collection of live reptiles and amphibians in its now-defunct natural history museum.
In 1937, Wiley and her mother, Mary Gough, moved to Long Beach to set up a roadside zoo made up mostly of her reptiles. According to a 1976 article in Los Fierros de los Cerritos, the women arrived with snakes, lizards, tarantulas and a two-headed turtle.
The zoo was eventually moved to Cypress due to restrictions in Los Angeles County over keeping snakes as pets.
During her time in Long Beach, Wiley founded the Long Beach Zoological Society, which no longer exists.
On July 20, 1948, journalist Daniel P. Mannix was at her home to photograph her collection as part of a story. A newly acquired Indian cobra she was posing with bit Wiley when it was startled by the flash from the photographer’s camera. When she went to get her snakebite kit, one vial of cobra anti-venom had evaporated and the other was broken, and the Long Beach Hospital only had anti-venom serums for North American snakes. She was pronounced dead less than two hours after being bitten.
Wiley lived at 34 Market St., a short distance from where Grace Park now stands.
Contact Beatriz E. Valenzuela at 562-499-1466.