Know before you go: Wahpeton is 50 miles south of Fargo, straight down Rt. 75. The monument is easy to reach from downtown: drive south on 182nd Ave SE for about a mile and the cemetery will be on your left. You may be able to park off the road, in the entrance to the cemetery. During the winter, you may have to just park along the road as the entrance to the cemetery may not be kept plowed. The attributes indicate it will be a short walk and that it is available in winter. It *should* be accessible all seasons, but there may be deep snow to walk through. The coordinates get you to the cemetery, the monument itself should be easy to identify.
Required to log: Just inside the entrance flanked by short, white brick columns, there is a "waist high" grey stone monument on your left as you enter (right as you exit). On the slanted top, it says "Gone to rest". (You should be able to see this even in heavy snow.) What is the last name of the person buried here?
Significance of the location: A visit from the circuls to the tiny town of Wahpeton, North Dakota was a huge event. The Ringling’s 1897 season had been a financial struggle and cancelling a show wasn’t an option. So, on 10 June 1897 the laborers of the Ringling Brothers Circus were erecting the main tent in Wahpeton, North Dakota, while the skies darkened. As the storm swept in, a bolt of lightning struck and shattered the main tent pole. Two workers, Charles Smith and Charles Walters, were killed by the falling pole. A third man, foreman Charles Miller, would die a year later from injuries suffered that day. The newspaper reported that a dozen other men were knocked senseless by the lightning strike.
Despite the tragedy, the show went ahead as scheduled. During the parade, the weather was so bad that horse-drawn carriages became bogged down in the mud, and elephants had to be used to push them out.
Smith, 22 years old, and Walters, 30, were far from home and family, but they would be remembered. Circus people stick together, after all, like family. The men were buried that same afternoon, reportedly before a crowd of 7,000 people, in the Riverside Cemetery (aka Bohemian Cemetery), a little way south of town, following the afternoon show. The afternoon show’s earnings paid for the funeral. (One site reports that since both men were members of the Knights of Pythias, a popular fraternal order, the knights arranged for the funeral.)
For a few months, the pieces of the tent pole were used to mark the gravesite. In September, 1897, it was replaced with a granite monument, sculpted to represent the remains of the original tent pole. Carved into it is the rope-and-pulley system they were using to winch it up, and you can see jagged lines mimicking where the lightning struck. Unsure if the monument was paid for by the Knights of Pythias or by circus workers…who were probably also members of the Knights. The monument reportedly cost $400.
It's probably safe to say that most people in Wahpeton are unaware of this unusual and compelling monument, but rumor has it that still today, when a circus comes to town, circus workers come here to pay their respects.
References: Information pulled rom the websites heritagerenewal.org and atlasobscura.com. The heritagerenewal.org write-up was research by Chloe Quirk, HIST 489, NDSU, Fall 2007.
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Virtual Rewards 3.0 - 2022-2023
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