RINGLING BROTHERS CIRCUS MONUMENT, WAHPETON ND

Years ago before Interstate Highways, I used to notice little cast iron signs along the roadways and started photographing them with the idea of doing a book about them, and calling it "LITTLE BITs of HISTORY". Well, the idea & the photos got lost somewhere along the way, and the following reminded me of it.

Joanne sent me a tourism flyer with this "little bit" of circus history, many of you may know the story, like me there are probably many of you who do not.

RIVERSIDE CEMETERY WAHPETON ND
The weather was bad on the morning of June 10, 1897; rainy,with thunderstorms approaching. The Ringling Brother's Circus was setting up for a show that evening in Wahpeton. As circus workers raised the tent, a clap of thunder and bolt of lightning pierced the sky, killing two men and injuring others. The two men Charles Smith and Charles Walters, were buried in a pauper's cemetery just south of town. The monument that marks the graves of Smith and Walters is an exact replica of the stricken center pole, right down to rope, pulleys, & chain used to raise the big top. A third man died from his injuries a year later.