Delavan, Wisconsin — Circus Capital
Near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Delavan does not look like a circus town, but for nearly half a century it was one of the most important in America. In eighteen forty-seven, a full year before Wisconsin became a state and roughly thirty-seven years before the Ringling Brothers set up their first tent in Baraboo, the Mabie brothers brought their United States Olympic Circus here to winter. They bought four hundred acres of pasture and barn space for about three thousand dollars and built the first permanent circus winter headquarters in the Midwest.
Between eighteen forty-seven and eighteen ninety-four, twenty-six different circuses wintered in Delavan. The concept for P.T.
Barnum's Asiatic Caravan was sketched out here in eighteen seventy-one. The shows are long gone, but the town remembers.
