Celebrating the Fourth of July, circus-style
By MIKE MCKENNA
There once was a time before cellphones, zoos and Top Golf when entertainment wasn’t so easy to come by. The circus coming to town—especially a small town in the middle-of-nowhere Idaho—was a really big deal.
Just a few years after Hailey became an official town, W.W. Cole’s Colossal Circus made a stop in the Wood River Valley.
It was 1884 and folks of all ages came from miles around to see the circus. It’s estimated that 6,000 people traveled to Hailey, roughly doubling the town’s population. The Daily Wood River Times still complained, however, saying that the numbers would have been higher with better advertising.
The influx of visitors certainly must have been good news for Hailey’s 18 saloons and 12 gambling halls!
The large crowd lined Main Street as the circus made its “Grand Street Parade” from the train depot to the circus grounds. Covering nearly a mile, the parade included five elephants, a caravan of camels, several black stallions, a hippopotamus, a rhino, lions, tigers and snakes—and undoubtedly some snake oil salesmen, as well. It took over 300 men to manage the circus and its moving menagerie.
The circus included the largest Indian elephant ever in captivity at the time.
“Samson” weighed in at five tons and stood over 12 feet tall. Much like his namesake, Samson was also known for causing great damage when he was angry.
George Conklin was the head trainer for the Cole Circus. Conklin stated that about once a year, Samson would lose his cool and run amok. He’d then go back to being the fairly passive “mastodon,” as they marketed him, that people loved.
Before the parade had even started, Samson had an incident with an empty train car, tossing it 20 feet with his trunk. Conklin hobbled Samson with leg chains as a punishment.
Shortly after the parade ended and Samson had dropped off a bunch of kids who rode on him during it, a Delilah-type situation got him fired up. Conklin believed it was because a younger male elephant was making the moves on one of Samson’s females.
Whatever the reason, the largest land animal on earth decided it was done being nice. Samson began by mauling a couple of mastiffs and then attacked the lion cage. Samson destroyed a few more wagons before rampaging through town.
Numerous attempts to shoot Samson had little impact until he got himself caught amongst some of the carnage the he’d created back at the train depot. The handlers roped Samson up and walked him peacefully back to camp. Samson was soon welcoming curious onlookers again and, as the Times stated, “seemed to enjoy the fun” of his rampage.
Samson died in a fire many years later and his bones were collected and put on display in the Museum of Natural History in New York.
This year, Hailey’s Fourth of July Parade will honor the 140th anniversary of Samson and the first-ever circus coming to town. Find out at more ValleyChamer.org or by visiting the Blaine County Historical Museum.