History
Stonehouse started the show in 1895 with a pony, a phonograph, a stereopticon. His circus was purchased by the American Circus Corporation in 1929 and was merged with the Sells-Floto Circus, John Robinson Shows, and Sparks Circus. That same year John Nicholas Ringling bought out the American Circus Corporation and folded all the performers into his Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
One of their more famous animals was Black Diamond, an Indian elephant whose unpredictable temper resulted in the deaths of several people and was shot between 50-100 times in 1929, before his own death.
On May 15, 1922, a large circus elephant known as Tusko escaped from the Al G. Barnes Circus, which was making one of its stops in Sedro-Woolley, Washington at that time. The elephant stomped his way through the little logging town and right into local history, demolishing fences, knocking over laundry lines and trees, telephone poles, and a Model T along the way.
Read more about this topic: Al G. Barnes Circus
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“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
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“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)