Simply put, the Traverse City area needed a break in the summer of 1897. There was no official Independence Day celebration in TC that year, with residents having to travel to Manistee and Cadillac for the biggest parties in the region. A heat wave had settled in across Michigan, with eight straight days topping out above 90 degrees that month with zero rainfall. In a time of candlelight and minimal access to ice, there were some predictable outcomes. 

In early July, a fire swept through Lake Ann, nearly wiping out the town with 50 buildings destroyed, 75 families left unhoused and one person, as the Traverse City Morning Record put it, “cremated.” A few days later, Bellaire’s largest factory burned to the ground, and on the 10th, a house on Traverse City’s Front Street also burned.

With all that going on, you’d think a circus coming to town would be a big deal, let alone a visit from the Ringling Brothers themselves, but no – the initial announcement of this esteemed purveyor of entertainment was a subtle one. On July 13, 1897, the Morning Record offered a list of "Brevities." Among the announcements that Artie Wait was that there would be an ice cream social at “the Swedish church” on Saturday, ten cents for ice cream and cake and this: 

“The dead walls, bill boards and windows are being decorated with bright colored lithographs, announcing the coming, on August 3, of Ringling Brothers’ big circus.” That was it. The circus was coming. 

The drumbeat would grow considerably louder the following day, with small entries mentioning the circus’ newest novelty – a pair of polar bears – and a column of firebreathing copy in the Morning Record proclaiming the grandiosity of the show’s size. 

“This is now beyond all comparison the grandest and most colossal amusement institution ever organized, either in this or any other country … no enumeration of figures – no mere list of wondrous figures could give an adequate idea of the resources of the show – its overshadowing immensity, its wealth of paraphernalia, the vastness of its mammoth hippodrome pavilions, its army of people, its dazzling glories of gleaming gold and scintillating color, and its kaleidoscopic array of strange peoples and still stranger wild beasts.”

It didn’t take long before concerns over the condition of Traverse City’s roadways were brought up. “Alderman Lardie suggested that the teams accompanying the Ringling circus be prohibited from using Cass Street south of the city limits, as the recent improvement has not yet been sufficiently settled to make heavy trucking upon it advisable.” The next time you turn onto Cass from South Airport and make the drive into town, spare a thought for the clowns, elephants and hippopotamuses that nearly went before you along that same stretch. 

Even for the owners of this impressive circus, Traverse City was a place to take a couple of days' vacation. The Morning Record reported on August 3rd, the day of the circus, that “Al and Henry Ringling of Ringling Bros. circus arrived in the city last evening and drove out to Carp Lake early this morning for a couple days of fishing on the Lady Watts [a pleasure yacht].” 

Finally, the big day arrived. Greeting the circus, per the Morning Record, was a huge turnout. “The great crowd in the city yesterday was the largest in town to attend a circus in years, and the words of one of the Ringling Bros.: “This looks like good times for Traverse City,” are significant.” The paper’s reporting continued: “ The great combined shows of these still greater show people this year eclipses anything ever contemplated in the past, and as advertised, there is scarcely a doubt but that this is the most complete and the largest show of the kind in the country. 

“The management has exerted every effort to supply Amusement of a refined and attractive nature and have eliminated from the program everything that would tend to be objectionable.” 

“The crowd yesterday was enormous and the big tent was jammed, while the side shows entertained crowds in addition. Of the performance itself, only one criticism can be made - there is entirely too much for one pair of eyes to see. The circus tent is 325 feet long and seats nearly 12,000 people, and is the largest canvas ever constructed for circus use, without exception. There are three rings and two stages and something is going on in every one of them at the same time throughout the long program.”

It concludes: “All in all, the big circus is everything it was promised it should be, and the Messrs. Ringling have certainly fulfilled their promises and presented the biggest, brightest and best circus yet seen in the city.” You don’t have to take the Record’s word for it, though.

The Circus Annual Route Book of Ringling Brothers World's Greatest Shows Season of 1897 (viewable via the ISU Milner Library Digital collection here) recounted all the acts in the circus and documented every show from that year’s tour, which started in Joliet, Ill. passed through Petoskey and Manistee among other Michigan destinations and terminated in a town called Perry in the Oklahoma Territory. It’s worth paging through if any part of this recounting captured your interest. 

Of the Traverse City show, the tour book simply stated: “Clear and warm. Business big. A particularly large country audience, and great numbers of excursionists.” For an event so breathlessly built up to, this brevity from the tour book is pretty refreshing.