About Circus World Museum
Circus World stands on the ground where the Ringling Bros. Circus wintered from 1884 to 1918, along the Baraboo River in the town the five Ringling brothers called home. After railroad circuses faded, John M. Kelley, the brothers' longtime personal attorney, retired to Baraboo and began organizing the site's preservation, joined by members of the Gollmar family, first cousins of the Ringlings and circus performers themselves. Their fundraising produced a historical and educational facility that opened on July 1, 1959, with the property transferred to the Wisconsin Historical Society, which operates the museum today as one of its eleven historic sites and museums.
The museum began with less than an acre and six wagons. In 1960 Charles Phillip "Chappie" Fox became director and set out to rescue the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century parade wagons rotting in barns across the United States and Europe; with Milwaukee publicist Ben Barkin and sponsorship from the Schlitz Brewing Company he launched the Great Circus Parade to showcase them and fund further acquisitions. Later directors added original Ringling structures, land and collections and started summer performances. The site now covers 64 acres with 30 structures, seven of them National Historic Landmark buildings from the Ringling winter quarters, and more than 260 circus wagons, the largest such collection in the world, displayed in part in the Deppe Wagon Pavilion alongside pieces such as the Ringling Bros. Bell Wagon, believed to be the last circus bell wagon in existence.
Collections and Research Services
Serious researchers head a few blocks away to the Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center at 415 Lynn Street, which the museum describes as the world's foremost research facility for circus history. Established in 1965 to manage the museum's paper, image and sound holdings and renamed in 1991 for the man who directed it for 26 years, the library documents the American circus from 1793 onward: files on some 2,800 American circuses, a reference index of more than 300,000 performers and employees, photographs and negatives from the 1850s to the present, more than 10,000 posters and original poster art, 3,300 books, trade journals, route books, ledgers, contracts and the business papers of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey from 1935 to 1950. A music archive holds over 4,500 band folios, including the library of Merle Evans, the circus's bandleader from 1919 to 1970. Staff answer more than 2,000 inquiries a year, and genealogists tracing relatives who worked the shows are among the most frequent users. The library is non-circulating and open by appointment year-round, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; call (608) 266-6113, and use the online catalog and finding aids to prepare. If a circus performer turns up in your tree, our guide to free family history research explains how to document the rest of the family around that lead.
Planning Your Visit
Circus World is seasonal. The summer performance season, with daily Big Top shows, Kids' World Circus in the Hippodrome, guided wagon tours and juggling on the green, runs from mid-May through late August or early September, Wednesday through Monday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed Tuesdays. Shorter spring and fall seasons open the exhibit buildings on weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. without performances, a brief winter season opens Friday through Sunday, and the grounds close entirely from late September to late February. Published off-season admission is $12 for adults and teens, $10 for seniors and $8 for children 5 to 12, rising to $24, $20 and $16 in performance season; children under 5 and Wisconsin Historical Society members are free. Parking is free in the museum's own lots across and down the street, and the Cookhouse Grill serves meals in summer. Devil's Lake State Park is two miles away. Exact dates change yearly, so check circusworld.wisconsinhistory.org or call (608) 356-8341. The parent organization's Wisconsin Historical Museum and the Wisconsin Historical Society library and archives are in Madison, about an hour south.
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