Elephants, hippos and bears, oh my!
The Peru Circus winter quarters were established by Ben Wallace in 1892. The elephants and bears moved into the buildings on this property that year. For the next 50 years, these buildings, new buildings, and properties would house up to 40 elephants, polar bears, grizzly bears, Himalayan bears, and Nile River hippos. This was home to America’s largest Circus Corporation, where each year five major circuses were repaired, contracted and routed around the United States.
The elephants walked from winter quarters three miles outside of the city to central Peru each day for a healthy little exercise ride. Polar bears were playing in a pool of water. The colder the better. The hippos had their own pool inside the elephant stable where they could stay submerged as they pleased. The elephants enjoyed a leisurely swim in the adjacent Mississinewa River, weather permitting.
The elephant barn was also home to all the exhibit animals that did not perform and needed to be caged. The west wing of the barn had a long row of cages to house the many animals that were not performing.
The center of the barn remained open as a training area for working with the elephants. This also gave the trainers a place to perform the pedicures the elephants needed to keep their feet in good condition, as well as being able to physically attend to any ailments that might develop.
The circus menagerie was a traveling zoo. People across the United States had very little opportunity to see an animal that wasn’t on their farm. As the circus traveled from town to town and then moved on rails, more and more animals were transported to amaze the local people with wonders from around the world.
While many people may have seen a common black bear, seeing a white polar bear that stood nearly eleven feet tall on its hind legs was nearly unbelievable. Polar bears naturally climb onto things, whether it’s an ice flow, a fallen tree, or a foreign object. The circus used all of these traits when they pushed a carousel full of other bears, climbed and slid down a slide, or sat on its pedestal.
Many circus performances included multiple bear performances. Maybe it was a cage full of polar bears or a ring full of grizzly bears. Some acts even featured a mix of bears using polar bears, European brown bears, Himalayan bears, Syrian bears, and native black bears.
The hippopotamus can be a vicious animal to be around and then some are very manageable. Weighing nearly a ton when fully grown, they need to be in water to keep their skin in a supple condition. They can stay underwater, showing only their eyes, but they are not very good swimmers. For a very large animal, they are very quick in their movements. Running a short distance, they can reach a speed of almost 19 miles per hour. Being a herbivore or herbivore, the hippopotamus can develop a foot-long canine tooth.
Being the third largest mammal on the face of the earth, this was quite an attraction for Americans who were only familiar with a boar or a cow.
There are two different types of elephants, the Asian elephant and the African elephant. The Asian elephant has always been the most widely used elephant in circuses and zoos. Asian or Indian elephants are easily identified by their smaller ears. African elephants are divided into two subspecies: the Forest, or technically speaking, Loxodonta Africana Cyclotis, and the Savannah, or Loxadonta Africana. The Asiatic is known by its scientific name of Elephas Maximus.
The elephant is only one of three hundred and fifty-two species of proboscideans. In other words, they have a long nose or trunk. The elephant’s truck contains forty thousand tendons and muscles. This allows the elephant to literally pick up a dime. They feed, water, spray, put dirt and hay on their backs to keep ticklish flies away, they can lift a person with their trunk or push and pull as needed.
The elephant has a set of teeth that grind its forage into digestible foods. Living 60 to 80 years in captivity, without concern for comfort, food or shelter, the elephant will acquire six sets of teeth in its lifetime. Using their own trunk to pull out a loose tooth, they pass many of them through the intestines, when they find them, these teeth are almost the size of a human hand.
The most noticeable thing on any elephant is the tusks. The fangs of a male are always larger than those of a female. Males can reach three to four feet of pure ivory. This becomes another tool the elephant can use to move things and can also become a weapon. African elephants tend to develop tusks more easily than Asian elephants, and the forest elephant’s tusk is almost always downward. The tusk is actually another tooth of the elephant.
The foot is the main part of any elephant. Growing twelve to fourteen inches wide in an adult elephant, the elephant actually walks on its toes. These are the white nails we see. There is a large cushion behind the toes that supports the enormous weight of an elephant. This acts like a rubber cushion for a tennis shoe. Despite the weight, an elephant can be graceful enough to walk without making a sound or even leave a footprint.
Nearly 100 years later, The Circus Hall of Fame now rests within five of these original buildings, known as the winter quarters of the American Circus Corporation. The polar bear pool is still there, but it’s full of dirt and grass. The hippo pool is gone and replaced with a concrete floor for the machine shop. The elephant stable is still there, but the wall has been removed leaving the building open.
The rich history of the circus in Indiana is the highlight of every visitor’s trip to the Circus Hall of Fame. We are telling the stories of the circus greats of all time, the anonymous little workers, the management, the press agents and the animals that everyone loved to see.
We are working on several major developments to repair and restore these old barns. Indiana Landmarks has awarded us a matching fund grant to perform a structural evaluation.
With the 17 days at the Indiana State Fair over and all of us volunteering back to our real jobs, this structural evaluation will occur in October. This will provide lots of details, CAD drawings, and a basic list of priorities to fix first. We are going to need to do a lot of work to keep these ancient buildings preserved. You can help us by visiting our Go Fund Me page.
We are open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm and by special arrangements. Call us at 800-771-0241 to make special arrangements to come see some of Indiana’s great circus heritage.