The Circus Comes to Fremont County

Long before radio static, flickering television sets, or the glow of a smartphone, the promise of a circus train rolling into town was enough to electrify Fremont County.

Dances, school productions, a few traveling music groups, and small-town movie theaters were the only outlets on a cold Fremont County night aside from reading by a coal oil lantern.

In our overstimulated times, it would have been a draconian existence at best. One thing that did enliven interest across the Wind River and Sweetwater Valleys was circuses, wild west shows, and action-themed events involving aircraft and automobiles. Even those had to wait for the arrival of the Chicago North Western railroad in 1906.

When the railroad arrived, Shoshoni began to diminish, Lander grew as the western terminus of the railroad, and in between Hudson and Riverton sprang to life out of the vastness of the sagebrush and cactus indigenous to the area.

Electricity arrived in Lander in the late 1890s, followed by Shoshoni when the Boysen Dam powerplant came to life in 1908, and Riverton, and then Hudson had local diesel or coal-powered plants. These lit up just a few low-wattage light bulbs in a few homes in town. The farms and ranches in the surrounding area went dark at night, with just a kerosene lamp to illuminate the darkness.

There wasn’t much leisure time. No television, internet, radio, or any other entertainment aside from reading or playing a few scratchy 78 RPM records on a hand-cranked phonograph.

Fremont County was a target-rich environment for traveling shows, minstrels, and silent films.

When Ed Farlow started the first Pioneer Days Parade and Rodeo in 1894, it was a huge hit, bringing in families from Crook’s Gap, Lost Cabin, Never Sweat (Dubois), and all parts in between.

Farlow hit on something that outside promoters soon discovered once the railroad reached the county. Farlow was following in the footsteps of a national trend that had begun more than a decade earlier with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show in Omaha.

Before the first bronc rider hit the arena at Pioneer Days, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show debuted. Bill Cody (Buffalo Bill) was a showman extraordinaire, and he knew the power of personality. That’s why his show included a cast of actual characters from the vanishing days of the Old West; Chief Sitting Bull and Annie Oakley are two prime examples.

The first circus in America came in Philadelphia in 1793.

Eight decades passed before the semblance of a “big top” arrived in Wyoming. In February 1876, the Lake Circus, owned by Agnes Thatcher Lake, did a couple of shows in Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming Territory.

The brief performance of the Lake Circus arriving on the Union Pacific Railroad was overshadowed by the marriage of Agnes Lake to Wild Bill Hickock of Deadwood, South Dakota Territory, the same weekend.

Circuses were big business in late 19th-century America.

In 1904, Ringling Brothers ran two full circus crews, one operating east of the Mississippi and the other, out west, traveling the railroads of the Great Plains and the vastness of the Rocky Mountains all the way to the West Coast.

In August 1904, after sellout crowds in Cheyenne, Ringling Brothers West loaded their equipment, animals, and personnel onto four trains bound for Utah for the next show. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle of August 5, 1904, reported that four extra Union Pacific Crews were called when the trains were loaded on Saturday, August 6, after the final show earlier that day. Part of the magic of the circus was watching the huge tents being set up with elephants used as heavy equipment. The take-down was just as impressive, and circus managers often sold tickets to watch the process.

It was 10 long years before the circus came to Fremont County. There were two problems with getting a large production of any type to central Wyoming. The first was the isolation and low population, the second was that any trip ended at Lander; there was no route west. Traveling shows had to return the same way they had come, at least as far as Orin Junction, where they could switch tracks and go anywhere.

In July 1914, the Yankee Robinson Circus came to Lander.

Fayette Ludowick “Yankee” Robinson was born in Avon, New York, on May 2, 1818. He was a dissatisfied shoemaker who moved to Chicago in 1845, had a change of life, and opened a minstrel show, the “Olympic Serenaders” in 1846. He joined the June and Turner Circus that same year. He soon opened “The Yankee Robinson Circus.”

Albert, Otto, Alfred, Charles, and John Ringling worked for Yankee. The brothers later purchased the Yankee Robinson Circus as well as Barnum and Bailey’s Circus.

From the early 1900s to 1930, Ringling Brothers ran a western circus under the name “Yankee Robinson.” It was this subsidiary that came to Lander in the summer of 1914.

For 10 cents, children, and for a quarter, adults could see “Alice – The Famous Bear Girl,” or watch “Kongo – the Largest Beast that Walks – Larger than Jumbo,” or witness the exploits of the “Wizarette Wire Family” as they walked the tightrope or flew from the trapeze high above.

This was a major circus with 1,000 employees, two elephant herds, three rings, and what was advertised as the largest circus tent ever made.

The show included “Captain Buck’s 20 Performing Sea Lions,” 50 clowns, and “Texas Bill’s Wild West Show.”

Included in the cast of Texas Bill’s show was Joseph Enos, a Northern Arapaho Tribal member from the Wind River Reservation. Joseph was listed in the program under the sub-title “Indians” and was part of Texas Bill’s Wild West Show.

The pace this circus kept was frenetic at best and borderline insane at worst. They traveled from April to November across the west, averaging six shows a week in six different towns. Setting up and taking down filled much of the time of the crew.

Local farmers and ranchers profited when a circus, especially a big one like the Yankee Robinson, came to town. The elephants, camels, horses, and zebras all required hay and grain. The sea lions ate a lot of fish, and the big cats, the lions and tigers, all required meat. The Yankee Robinson procurement team purchased meat, hay, and grain locally.

The arrival of the two circus trains to Lander was heralded across the desert from Casper as they traveled through Wolton, Moneta, Shoshoni, and Riverton before reaching Lander via the telegraph.

On the return, the Yankee Robinson Circus did a show in Shoshoni.

Other smaller circuses set up in Shoshoni before 1914, drawing crowds from Lysite, Lost Cabin, Pavilion, and Riverton before moving another 45 miles for a second show in Lander. Riverton was often skipped since it was the smaller community between the two largest towns in Fremont County, Shoshoni and Lander.

Not everyone was impressed, or at least not ready to give the rival town credit. The ongoing rivalry between Riverton and Lander was evident in a March 16, 1916, story in the Wyoming State Journal.

It seems to the Enterprise that even the Yankee Robinson Circus once forgot the fame of Riverton. But how can a mild and unexciting little affair like a circus or a wool car expect to attract any attention when all the Riverton residents are afraid to get away from Main Street, for fear they might miss one of the daily “knockdowns and drag-outs” or one of the semi-occasional homicides?
Calm down, Riverton. It takes a big town to get Ringling’s and the Sells-Floto outfit to play the same date.

In 1914, the demographics changed with the opening of the Wind River Canyon by the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Circus crowds rode the train from Bonneville to Thermopolis to catch shows as the traveling circuses moved up the Big Horn Basin to Montana.

The Gentry Brothers Show and Wild Animal Circus began as the classic “dog and pony” show and expanded into acrobatics, and even had a few elephants. They came to Wyoming in 1920.

The Sells-Floto Circus, another subsidiary of Ringling Brothers, crossed Wyoming in 1921.

As the county grew, Shoshoni shrank, and the circus no longer came to town. Riverton became the central location for the circus in the late 1930s.

In 1940, the Bud Anderson Circus arrived at the Riverton Depot. While the three rings under the big top tent were the focused attraction, the days of the sideshow were in top form.

For a dime, audiences could see magician Larry Benner, snake charmer Connie Wilson (no children under 16 admitted), or Cleo Bennet’s hypnotism act. The exotic Zaza Coriell performed the Chinese Sword Mystery, while Bam Boola spun fiery batons and Tex Orton ‘sawed’ his wife Alice in half before she emerged unharmed.

Dora Widener climbed ladders made of swords in a skimpy outfit, and Vernell Coriell was a talented juggler.

These were all popular attractions in 1940.

This was a horse-and-elephant show without big cats.

Concessions were a huge moneymaker for the circus, and each show started with a colorful spectacle and the singing of “God Bless America.”

Patriotic fervor was rising across the Great Plains as Germany and Japan advanced towards the inevitable war.

Jack Hoxie, a rodeo cowboy, trick roper, and star of silent films and a few of the early talking westerns of the 1930s, was not an A-level celebrity any longer, but he drew crowds, and his introduction was featured in the opening act.

In 1945, the Bud Anderson Circus returned for a show in Riverton. In 1940, they performed in Riverton and Lander, but the gate was poor in Lander, and they didn’t return. The theme had changed from the Old West to an “All-American Victory Circus,” claiming to be the “Show of the Century.”

They added acrobats, trapeze artist Margaret Wilkins, and an aerial ballet. The Frazier high wire act and “Fire Walking Dogs.” They were down to a single elephant, “Susie,” but she was a popular attraction.

In 1954, the largest circus to ever perform in Fremont County came to Riverton on June 29. The Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers Circus started their run through Wyoming on June 23 with a show in Newcastle, followed in consecutive days with circuses in Gillette, Sheridan, Buffalo, Midwest-Edgerton, Casper, and then Riverton.

On June 30th, they had a show in Thermopolis, then traveled up the Big Horn Basin to Worland, Greybull, Lovell, and finally Powell for the 4th of July.

It was advertised as the world’s second-largest circus, and it was impressive even before it reached the Riverton city limits.

Circus trains gradually disappeared after World War II as highways improved and larger, more reliable semi-trucks took over the job once done by rail cars. The Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers caravan stretched over several miles with hundreds of trucks and support vehicles. People lined the narrow two-lane highway from Shoshoni just to witness the spectacle. The specialty “giraffe truck” with a high roof was a fan favorite.

The complement of 156 exotic animals, including 22 elephants, 11 bears, 35 monkeys a pair of water buffalo, four tigers and a sea lion made it a zoo on wheels. They carried a herd of 107 horses, mules, and ponies as well.

This was a big circus and was the highlight of the summer of 1954.

Even their payroll was bigger than anything seen in Fremont County to that point. Hundreds of front office staff and a full publicity and advertising crew advanced a couple of days ahead of the circus with a fleet of five panel trucks and a supply car filled with posters and personalities for local radio spots.

They were a city on wheels with a complete restaurant staff, animal handlers, side show performers, main attraction performers, a legal team, and their own five-man police force. Even their travel brochure was big, 96 pages in all, with most of it paid for with advertising from businesses in their home base of Hugo, Oklahoma.

They traveled 12,907 miles, doing their final show at home in Hugo after a long 83-mile run from Madill, Oklahoma. Their final two weeks were all in towns and cities across Oklahoma.

The show opened where it ended, in Hugo, on April 18.

Between their first show and the final performance, they performed seven days a week. Putting on 197 shows in a little over six months.

Circuses still came to Riverton occasionally over the next seven decades. The Shrine Circus was a popular event for many summers.

The circus began to fall out of favor in the 1960s. The animal rights movement of the 1970s through the present day has diminished them further. Many states don’t allow traveling animal acts.

There are still eight traveling circuses mainly working small towns in the USA. They are the Carden International Circus, Carson & Barnes Circus, Franzen Brothers Circus, Jordan World Circus, Loomis Brothers Circus, Royal Hanneford Circus, Tarzan Zerbini Circus, and the Culpepper and Merriweather Circus.

Another 18 human-only circuses travel as well.

In their day, they were the highlight of summer for children across the nation. They were once so popular that they were filmed and shown in theaters, especially in the silent film era.

In Fremont County, AM radio arrived in 1930 from KDFN in Casper, which changed to KTWO in 1959. Though it was filled with static during the day, the signal was clear at night.

There was finally a little “in home” entertainment and it only grew when Mildred Erst began TV broadcasting into the Wind River Valley with KWRB in December 1957.

FM radio, cable television, the internet, and cell phones now entertain people 24/7, but there was a time when hearts beat fast, children danced excitedly, and parents found money for tickets, the circus was coming to town.

For children who once lined the streets of Riverton, Shoshoni, and Lander, the circus wasn’t just entertainment; it was magic. A once-a-year promise that the world was bigger, stranger, and more colorful than their sagebrush horizon.