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First a show of hands – how many of you have ever been to see a circus? Anyone old enough to have seen a circus, as they saw, “under the big top,” – which means under a big tent.
Going back in Texas history more than a century, Texas children thrilled to highwire acts, lion tamers, elephants, jugglers, clowns and trick riders. There were more than a dozen circuses that traveled during the “season” -- from April through October -- through Texas and some of our neighboring states.
Each circus would arrive in town, lease an acre or two of land on the outskirts of town, pitch their tents, set up animal cages and ticket booths and then distribute posters and fliers around town, announcing show times and ticket prices.
Many circuses advertised by staging a parade through town, featuring a calliope or band playing to attract attention. Word traveled fast and soon the streets were lined with cheering crowds of potential ticket buyers.
Sadly, slowly but surely, especially with the advent of air-conditioning and home entertainment (i.e., TV), many of the smaller circuses found it difficult to attract large enough audiences to cover the expense of traveling from town to town.
Thus, the little circuses disbanded. Some of the performers, riggers, truck drivers and animal handlers found work with other, larger shows. Others retired, often to the communities they knew best -- the towns or cities where they “wintered,” where they were semi-rooted into the community.
Beginning in 1941, the Kelly and Miller Brothers were recruited to headquarter in Hugo by Vernon and Jewell Pratt, a local couple who owned a grocery store. In return for relocating their headquarters from Kansas Oklahoma, the circus offered free Sunday performances. (Hugo is located in the southeast corner of the state, nine miles from the Texas-Oklahoma border.)
Hugo eventually became a popular wintering place for circus and rodeo companies, because of its mild climate. Townspeople and circus people formed relationships and collaborated on civic projects. An estimated 20 circuses at times were based in Hugo, and in 2018 three still operated there: Carson and Barnes, Kelly Miller, and Culpepper & Merriweather. All are tent circuses that travel the region.
Because so many circus people made Hugo their home in retirement, in 1960, when circus owner D.R. Miller’s brother Kelly was killed, Miller bought an entire section in Hugo’s Mt. Olivet Cemetery, where circus performers and circus personnel could be buried. The section was named “Showmen’s Rest.”
Its boundaries marked by elephant topped monuments, the Showmen’s Rest section holds tributes to “all showmen under God’s big top,” from animal trainers to jugglers to high wire artists. The life-size grave of Ringmaster John Strong wearing a top hat designates him as
“the man with more friends than Santa Claus” and Zefta Loyal still celebrates her title as the “Queen of Bareback Riders.”
Elephant trainers Ted Svertesky, who perished in a circus train wreck, and John Carroll, who was crushed by one of his animals, both have graves decorated with pachyderms. While most of the performers chose epitaphs that grandly immortalized their talents, circus manager and cemetery founder D.R. Miller’s grave simply says: “Dun Rovin.”
Several years after Miller established Hugo’s Showmen’s Rest, Carroll left a surprisingly large endowment to be used to purchase monuments for any circus people unable to afford their final expenses.
Just outside of Hugo, the Endangered Ark Foundation provides housing, comfort and care on 200 acres at a “retirement ranch” for a growing herd of retired circus elephants.
Maybe this all contributed to Hugo claiming the title of “Circus City U.S.A.”
In all, there are four “Showmen’s Rests” in the country -- Hugo’s at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Chicago’s Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, dating back to 1918 when a train wreck killed 87 of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus and Midway Shows plus numerous animals, Showmen’s Rest Cemetery in Tampa, Florida, and Showmen’s Rest in North Miami.
