Routing the Circus: The Things They Carried
With the expansion of railroads, the circus exploded.
Before railroads, tent shows traversed what land they could in their wagons. With the advent of the railroad era, circuses not only had the transportation to grow their industry, but the audience to do it - circus performers were not the only people taking advantage of the new rails heading West.Railroads carried more than people and cargo. Over rivers, mountains, and miles they transported concepts about circus performers and the world at large, little novel grains that rooted themselves into the minds of the audience. The impact of this spread is incalculable. To what extent did savage portrayals of particular performers spark further white supremacist ideologies? On the other hand, who was inspired to reach for more after witnessing the strength and skill of women performers, or the musical talent of Black sideshow bands?
Below is an interactive map with filters for visualizing circus routes in the context of historical railways and population data. See the growth yourself!
Map data reflects current names. In some cases, the map creators were required to make estimations about the location of a route stop. For more information on contemporaneous location names, including Native American territories, please see the route books, which are hyperlinked within the map's location pop-ups.
Ways to use this map experience
- LOOKING FOR A PARTICULAR ROUTE? Use the Search For Routes widget to filter for a particular company, and then further filter by year. If you have a circus selected in the Circus is field, only the year(s) for which data of that circus is available will appear as an option in the Year is field. To search for a year of routes from any company, set the Circus is field back to All before selecting a year.
- WANT TO SEE THE GROWTH OF THE CIRCUS? Use the Circus Routes through Time widget to see how many circus routes occurred up to a given point by selecting a year for the Circus Routes up to filter. You can contextualize this growth by selecting a year for the US Railroad in operation by filter.
- Use the Map Layers widget to configure the visibility of each data set. The circus routes point layer is off by default; turn it on to start playing! This is also where you can toggle Decennial Census population data layers visibility.
- Note that these widgets are interdependent. For example, if you've filtered down to a single route using the Search For Routes widget, you'll only see one year of data as available in the Circus Routes through Time widget. Toggle a widget or individual filter off to remove its effects from your visualization.
See a map of individual circus routes with itineraries 1842-1959 here.