Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Cole Bros. Circus 1930 #4 (18 years later)


Scan000010856, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

The show's equipment seen rotting in a field in 1948 near Houston, Texas.

Posted by Buckles at 2/13/2008 02:38:00 PM

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

George Christy saw gold, and fun, in all that rotten wood and bought a lot of the Cole stuff. The steam calliope went to Karland Frischkorn in Norfolk, VA and after a series of owners now has a permanent home in Peru, IN. Some also went up to Illinois for the ill-fated Ingraham and Rutherford operation that never hit realized a future. Three tableaus, two of which were ex-Ringling/Gollmar cages, did duty at the Railroad Fair in Chicago and then went into preservation. Another load of wagons went out to Arvil Allread in California, including the Harris Bros. tunnel show ticket wagon, something that you don't see every day. All of the Allread wagons are still in existence today, sequestered away. The rest of Christy's ex-Cole did rot away before Chappie Fox got enthused about such things and had a budget to do something about it. By the time he sent a crew to clean out Christy's South Houston barn, there wasn't much left besides an 1883 Barnum & London tableau cage some elephant skulls and the original top canopy from the 1904-1911 Ringling lead bandwagon. Quite a haul.

14 February, 2008 15:01

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