Circus World: Keeping the Big Top Alive
Near Baraboo, Wisconsin
Right here, along the Baraboo River, the greatest circus in American history spent its winters, and today that very ground is a museum. Circus World opened on the first of July, nineteen fifty-nine, on the original winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers, where several of the old brick animal houses and shops still stand. The idea came from John Kelley, a former lawyer for the Ringlings, who incorporated the museum in nineteen fifty-four to preserve the story of the circus.
Its greatest treasure is wagons. Circus World holds the largest collection of antique circus wagons on Earth, more than two hundred of them, gilded and hand-carved show pieces that once rolled through town after town. Many of them were paraded through the streets of Milwaukee for years in the famous Great Circus Parade.
The museum also shelters the Robert Parkinson Library and Research Center, a staggering archive holding some fifty thousand photographs, thousands of posters, and the paper history of the American circus. Owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society, Circus World keeps the sawdust and the spectacle alive with live performances under canvas each summer, on the very ground where five brothers first dreamed it all up.
