Once Upon A Time.......
....there was the Great Circus Parade!
Perhaps it is no surprise that in a city made famous by beer, Schlitz Brewing brought the circus to the streets of Milwaukee by sponsoring the first Great Circus Parade in 1963. As a fundraiser for the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the Great Circus Parade featured animals, circus wagons, marching bands, wagons, clowns, and circus performers. The parade, held twenty-nine times in Milwaukee, attracted tens of thousands of spectators each year, making it one of the largest spectator events in the state.
The Great Circus Parade honored the many circuses that had originated in Wisconsin and was born of the collaboration of C.P. “Chappie” Fox and Ben Barkin. Fox, a self-taught circus historian, was director of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo from 1960 to 1972.
The parade format represented a period in American history, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when circuses traveled by rail from town to town. They held parades in each city to attract publicity and paying customers, with bands, “wild” animals, and elaborately ornamented wagons. The Great Circus Parade featured its own train, which traveled the 200-plus miles from Baraboo to Milwaukee by way of northern Chicago suburbs like Arlington Heights, Barrington, and Palatine. Once the parade train arrived in Milwaukee, the public was invited to Veterans Park on the lakefront to get close looks at the animals, circus performers, and wagons. In 2009, the last time the parade was held, the Great Circus Parade Festival ran for four days prior to the parade.
The parade has faced its share of difficulties. It was cancelled in 1968 due to racial tensions in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, In 1994, four Clydesdale horses broke free from a wagon, bolting into the crowd, injuring at least ten spectators. Early in its existence, mayors of cities such as Chicago and New York attempted to have the parade moved to their cities. However, Barkin refused to see the parade leave Milwaukee. He stated “no one else can do this parade, because no one else has the wagons.” But the primary difficulty over the years was lack of funding. Indeed, for most of the 1970s and early 1980s, the lack of sponsors forced the parade into a twelve-year hiatus, from 1973 to 1985. Due to lack of financing, the parade was officially cancelled after 2003 parade; founder Chappie Fox died in the same year (Ben Barkin had died in 2001). However, in 2009 Bill Fox, Chappie Fox’s nephew, helped lead the effort to raise $1.5 million to hold the parade one last time.