Column: When the circus wagon tore up Broadway Avenue
Published 12:00 am Friday, April 26, 2002
My recent article about the creosote wooden blocks once used for Broadway’s paving resulted in a reader recalling an incident he heard about involving a circus wagon and several elephants.
As I mentioned in that article, those blocks were used as the pavement on Albert Lea’s major street from 1911 and 1912 to 1934. During those years, vehicular traffic went from horse-drawn to gas-powered. During those same years the vehicles gradually became larger and heavier, especially the trucks.
One can only speculate how those streets with wooden blocks held up with rain-storm and frost-heave conditions. It’s likely those streets needed constant patching. Also, it’s logical to say that the big trucks which went right through the center of the city on the highways during the early 1930s could create some of the darnedest potholes as those blocks shifted and sometimes separated.
With those dates, 1991 or 1912 to 1934, and the wooden block paving in mind, let’s gradually shift the subject to the incident based on a circus wagon and several elephants.
On that particular morning years and years ago, a traveling show this person said was the famous Ringling Brothers Circus unloaded their trains and prepared for the traditional parade in Albert Lea. This parade likely went north on Broadway, then west to the place where the big top tent was being erected. One can assume the circus grounds in that era were based on the present sites of either the Skyline Mall or Hayek Field.
The intention about eight or nine decades ago was to have the folks watching the parade to follow along and go to the circus itself. This was real advertising.
This parade featured horses galore, a real herd of elephants, clowns, performers of all types, wild animals in large open-sided cages mounted on wagons, and a band or two playing their music and riding on top of large wagons.
Nearly all those circus wagons were pulled by teams of horses.
Some of these wagons were huge. Many had steel wheels, were elaborately decorated, and just plain heavy. A good way to emphasize this is to refer to the old wagons on display at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis., and the wagons appearing in The Great Circus Parade each year in Milwaukee.
During one of those circus parades years ago on Albert Lea’s Broadway Avenue one of the heavy horse-drawn wagons became stuck on the wooden block pavement. This was the equivalent of being stuck in a big snow drift or in a deep mud hole.
According to the narrative I was told, extra horse teams couldn’t move the stuck wagon. Meanwhile, the rest of the parade behind this wagon would have to stop and wait or somehow go around the obstacle.
It was at this point that several elephants were brought to the scene. They quickly pulled the wagon out of its trap, and in the process tore up even more of the street pavement.
This incident supposedly formed the basis for a court case. The circus had to pay the city the costs to repair the street. As a result, this particular circus decided to never come back to Albert Lea.
To check out this incident further, and to obtain material for a possible article or column, I decided to follow up on the Ringling connection. After all, this was the circus specifically mentioned in the story I was told. To do this, I contacted the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis.
The Circus World Museum is located in this city 10 to 12 miles south of Wisconsin Dells where the Ringling Brothers Circus started. In fact, the Baraboo museum occupies the original buildings of the Ringlings’ winter quarters, which were used from about 1884 to 1918. (The present winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus are in Sarasota, Fla.)
I explained to one of the museum’s librarians or historians in Baraboo that the best way to get more information about the alleged street damage incident was to know when the Ringling Brothers Circus was in Albert Lea.
We’ll have more information in the next column based on the reply from Circus World Museum, plus details about two Ringling Brothers Circus parades and performances in Albert Lea.
Feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears Fridays in the Tribune.