In the last column I passed along a story based on a heavy circus wagon tearing up a portion of the creosote wooden block pavement on Albert Lea’s Broadway during a parade years ago. The traveling show allegedly involved with this incident was the famous Ringling Brothers Circus.

To get more information about this bit of local history I called the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis.

My prime quest was to get, if possible, the dates this circus was in Albert Lea between the years of 1911 and 1912 to 1934. Those were the years the pavement on the city’s main street and highway route was based on the wooden blocks.

One of the dates I was given was Aug. 26, 1910. The parade for this circus day in Albert Lea started at 10 a.m. a year or two before the advent of wooden block pavement.

The second date was July 29, 1912. Again, the circus parade started at 10 a.m. This should have been the time for the pavement incident mentioned in the last column. Yet, checking through three newspapers, the daily Tribune and the weekly Freeborn County Standard and Times-Enterprise, there wasn’t any mention of this incident at all.

The man I talked with at the Circus World Museum said Ringling is synonymous with the word circus. In other words, folks then and now make a definite word association with circus and Ringling. Thus, the street pavement tear-up incident may have happened at another time, but it was obviously another circus. In that era two or three circuses were coming to Albert Lea each year.

One factor the man from the Circus World Museum mentioned was that Ringling Brothers ceased going to cities under 10,000 population about 1919. Still another factor was those parades. They were eliminated by 1920. Those circus parades took time and were contending with an increase in motorized traffic.

Now, here comes some added information about circus day in Albert Lea with Ringling Brothers, based on the research for this column.

This circus came to Albert Lea from Faribault on the Rock Island Railroad early on the morning of Aug. 26, 1910. It took 85 railcars to bring 650 horses, 40 elephants and 108 wagons of wild beasts to the city. There were 1,280 people involved with the circus operations.

The Tribune said the &uot;largest crowd Albert Lea ever entertained&uot; was in the city on circus day. One estimate said there were 20,000 people, or twice the city’s normal population nine decades ago. Those folks were coming to the city from farms and towns over a wide area in special passenger trains, automobiles and in horse-drawn vehicles.

There seemed to be three separate aspects to circus day. One was to watch the erecting of the big tent, side shows, and other aspects of activity at the local circus grounds for the day. The second was watching the morning parade. And the third was attending the afternoon or evening performances.

Two years later this famous circus came to Albert lea for the last time on three separate trains. The Times-Enterprise newspaper described the parade that July morning in 1912 with these comments:

&uot;With trumpets blaring, armor glaring, and thousands of people staring, Ringling Brothers’ great parade passed through the streets Monday morning, giving townspeople and their country cousins the greatest outdoor spectacle that was ever before unfolded before the eyes of a circus loving people. … The parade was at least three miles long and filled with novel sights. There were over 1,200 people in the line, and … there was music of every description from savage pipers to brass bands, organs, chimes, and glad-voiced calliopes. A menagerie was disclosed in open cages, and notable animal exhibits were found in teams of zebras, camels and elephants, harnessed and driven by single drivers like horses.&uot;

And that was circus day in Albert Lea 90 years ago.

Feature writer Ed Shannon writes columns for the Friday edition of the Tribune.